Accused cleared of murder as witness admits to framing him

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A man has been ac­quit­ted of mur­der­ing a man in 2010, af­ter the State’s main wit­ness ad­mit­ted that she framed him.

Jaal­ib Daniel was found not guilty at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Ha­sine Shaikh on Thurs­day.

Daniel was ac­cused of mur­der­ing Tor­rey Richard­son, who was shot sev­er­al times in Mar­aval on Feb­ru­ary 24, 2010.

The State’s case against Daniel was sole­ly based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a woman, who claimed that she wit­nessed the shoot­ing when she was 19 years old.

How­ev­er, when she en­tered the wit­ness box dur­ing the tri­al, she sought to re­cant her pre­vi­ous claims and was deemed a hos­tile wit­ness.

She claimed that at the time she im­pli­cat­ed Daniel, she was a teen moth­er and had is­sues with se­cur­ing hous­ing.

She claimed that she agreed to fab­ri­cate the claims against Daniel in ex­change for be­ing placed in wit­ness pro­tec­tion.

She claimed that she had a change of heart be­fore be­ing called up­on to tes­ti­fy against him in the tri­al.

In de­cid­ing on the ver­dict for Daniel, Jus­tice Shaikh not­ed that the is­sue with the wit­ness meant that the State lacked any pos­i­tive and re­li­able iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ev­i­dence link­ing Daniel to the crime.

She al­so high­light­ed sig­nif­i­cant in­ves­tiga­tive fail­ures by the lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor, who ne­glect­ed to probe the wit­ness’ re­cant­ed sto­ry over what she claimed ac­tu­al­ly tran­spired on the day of Richard­son’s mur­der.

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions was rep­re­sent­ed by Am­bay Ramkellawan and Melis­sa Bood­hai. Daniel was rep­re­sent­ed by Ian Brooks and Ki­maa­da Ot­t­ley.