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Surveillance Video Frees Men From Murder Charge
Thu, November 26, 2015
Tonight, 28 year-old Bartolomeo Lucas, 28 year-old Daniel Cain, and 20 year-old Oscar Flores, all residents of Pinks Alley, are at home after spending a year in prison. They were on remand awaiting trial for the murder 33 year-old Harrison Smith which happened a year and 2 months ago. Today, the Magistrate sent them home because the police could not provide any evidence linking them to the murder. Moreover, police had surveillance footage which proved that they were innocent and sat on it for the entire time that the men were languishing in jail.

On Friday, October 3, of last year, 32 year-old Harrison Smith, and 23 year-old Eustace Lewis were both gunned down on North Front Street, where 3 men targeted them while they were riding past. Both men were shot, but Smith's injuries took his life. Well, a few days later, police were swift in bringing a murder charge against Bartolomeo Lucas, Daniel Caine and Oscar Flores, and since then, they've been in jail waiting their case to move forward.

At every adjournment, their attorney, Oscar Selgado, pressed the Chief Magistrate Ann Marie Smith, to consider throwing the case out because the police had not brought any evidence forward for the court to consider. But, dismissing a murder charge is not something that a judge or magistrate does lightly, and so, the Chief Magistrate kept granting the prosecution adjournments to allow for police to get the time they needed to gather the evidence to prosecute the accused.

Today, after 14 months, Selgado, the attorney for the defendants asked the court once again to throw the charge out and set the men free because the prosecution had not made any disclosure of evidence. This time, the Chief Magistrate agreed, and threw the case out. This allowed all 3 men to leave court freely.

But, 7News has learnt that had the police acted in a timely manner, these men would have been able to go home a few months sooner. That's because they came upon surveillance footage from Chon Sing Restaurant which showed that all 3 men were inside at the time of the shooting. So, they couldn't have been two places at once. The only reason that they had been charged was because an eyewitness gave police a statement pointing fingers at the 3 defendants as the shooters. The investigators had also gotten additional accounts from others which questioned the credibility of the supposed eyewitness, and that along with the surveillance should have set the men free.

Our information is that the Director of Public Prosecutions advised the investigators that discontinuing the case would be the most appropriate decision, but they didn't act on it. She then contacted Head of National Criminal Investigation's Branch, but this lead officer did not respond to her. We've since received a copy of a leaked internal memo sent from NCIB to all investigators ordering them to disregard the advice of the DPP whenever she advises that cases must be withdrawn. The memo mandated them to get permission from the NCIB in order to drop all charges.

That memo most likely caused these 3 defendants to spend a few months longer in jail that they needed to.

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