Suspected gangsters to be retried for killing cop’s 2-y-o daughter
Published:Wednesday | February 5, 2025 | 12:11 AMTanesha Mundle/Staff Reporter
Two men who were reportedly among a group of armed gangsters who shot and killed a toddler in August Town, St Andrew, in 2007 are to be retried on February 17 in the Home Circuit Court.
Adrian Tomlinson and Aaron Chambers are to be retried for the murder of two-year-old Tyra Lewis, the daughter of a policeman, following a hung jury trial in 2008.
The new trial date was scheduled on Monday when the accused appeared before Justice Leighton Pusey. A trial readiness hearing has also been scheduled for February 11.
The two defendants, who are on bail, were tried along with the now-deceased Rushane Ellis and Dante Tate.
Prosecutors led evidence that about 2 a.m. on March 19, 2007, armed thugs invaded the house where the child lived in August Town.
Thugs sprayed the child and her relatives with bullets while they slept.
The child’s 23-year-old mother and her six-year-old brother were among those injured. Two teenagers were also injured in the attack.
The attack, according to the investigator, was ordered by an area leader, who had an argument with a member of the family.
FAILED TO REACH UNANIMOUS VERDICT
The four men were initially tried from July 5 to August 13, 2010. However, a retrial was ordered after a 12-member jury had failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The jury voted 10 to two after considering the case.
At the time of the verdict, there was an amendment to the Jury Act, which makes provision for the court to accept majority verdicts for some categories of murder.
The amendment was effected on July 27, but neither trial judge Justice Courtney Daye nor prosecutor Kathy Pyke had been aware that the law had been passed, which would have allowed for the conviction of the men.
The amendment to the Jury Act, which came as part of the Government’s anti-crime package, abolished the need for unanimous verdicts in murder trials and made provision for majority verdicts as long as nine members of the jury vote for a conviction or acquittal.
The amendment makes provision for majority verdicts to be accepted in murder cases which are not likely to attract the death penalty.
But unanimous verdicts are still required in cases including the murder of members of the security forces, judicial officers, correctional officers, all acting in the execution of their duties; the murder of witnesses, and any murder committed in the course of or furtherance of an act involving violence and is calculated to create a state of fear in the public or any section of the public.