They were charged with the 2015 gun murder of the 39 year-old taxi-man, 39 Patrick Spencer, but tonight 23 year-old Charles Middleton and 25 year-old Cesario Choco, are free. They were acquitted in a trial without jury before Justice Colin Williams.
On the night of June 24, 2015, Patrick Spencer was socializing at a house on Cairo Street in Belize City. He was approached by 2 gunmen who opened fire and shot him multiple times to the body. He died on the spot.
Senior Crown Counsel Shanice Lovell, who prosecuted this case, called her main witness, a man who had given police a written statement that he saw Middleton and Choco that night, and that they were the gunmen who fatally shot Spencer. When this supposed eye-witness went on the stand however, he testified under oath that he didn't give police any statement. Crown Counsel Lovell applied to court to treat him as a hostile witness, which was granted.
She then called another man who testified that he also saw when 2 men shot Spencer, but his testimony did not tie the accused men to the crime because he told the court that the assailants wore masks, and he couldn't see their faces.
Having no other witness, Senior Crown Counsel Lovell was forced to close her case.
Justice Williams decided that he could not admit the caution statement of the hostile witness into evidence. Additionally, Oscar Selgado, defense attorney for Middleton and Choco, cited the appeal case of Japheth Bennett, where the Caribbean Court of Justice ruled that a court should not allow a trial to proceed on an uncontested statement of a witness who abandoned all material parts of it.
Justice Williams agreed, and he acquitted both men. setting them free.they left the court embracing family and friends after being freed from custody.
|
