A Morvant man has been acquitted for a second time of murdering another man after a WASA fete in 2009.
On December 9, Justice Nalini Singh found Frankie Jamal Bartholomew not guilty of murdering Marcus Mark on February 1, 2009.
Bartholomew, of Second Caledonia, was first freed on March 7, 2018, after a judge upheld an application challenging the reliability of the evidence.
The prosecution appealed the judge’s refusal to admit three critical statements by Mark’s girlfriend Ornella Nanton, the State’s main witness.
In February 2021, the Court of Appeal ordered Bartholomew to be re-indicted for the killing, overturning his earlier acquittal.
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However, in his second, judge-only trial, Singh found Bartholomew not guilty.
In her verdict, Singh held Nanton’s identification of Bartholomew as the shooter was “unreliable.”
Nanton was murdered before she could testify at the preliminary inquiry, but at the second trial, before Singh, prosecutors were able to have her statement to police tendered into evidence in their case against Bartholomew.
Mark had left the WASA fete and was at the corner of the Eastern Main Road and Railway Road, St Joseph, when he was ambushed by a man who shot him several times.
Nanton allegedly witnessed the shooting and identified Bartholomew as Mark’s attacker.
Six months later, she was murdered near her home at St Margaret’s Village in Claxton Bay.
She spoke of an incident inside the fete when Bartholomew allegedly spat on Mark’s face after he started dancing with a woman. Mark allegedly hit “Fish” with a bottle and both men, and their friends, began fighting.
Mark and Nanton left the fete, when the latter said she saw “Fish” approach with a gun and shoot him in the back. She said she did not know “Fish’s” real name, but gave a description of him.
In her ruling, Singh held the prosecution failed to establish a link between a dispute inside the fete and the shooting outside.
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“Notably, no evidence was presented to demonstrate that the hostility observed inside the fete persisted outside or that the accused had a gun inside the fete.”
She was also critical of the investigations of the murder.
“The failure of the police in this case is both egregious and deeply troubling.”
She said investigators failed to clarify critical details in Nanton’s statements, which, she said, deprived the court of essential evidence.
As she assessed critical failures by the police, Singh also faulted investigators for failing to gather expert evidence.
“A firearms expert could have provided clarity on bullet trajectories, distances, and the positioning of the shooter in relation to the position of the eyewitness.
“This is because the location of the shooter in relation to an eyewitness is a crucial factor in determining the reliability of identification evidence.”
She said investigators also failed to “methodically investigate and document the scene of the shooting.”
“The police never sought to clarify the precise location of the shooting when the statement was being recorded so as to give the tribunal of fact the most basic evidence in a criminal investigation: the location of the crime scene. This evidence is now irretrievably lost to the tribunal of fact.”
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Singh was also critical of the verification exercise, two weeks after the killing.
“By placing the accused in a room alongside only a uniformed officer, the police created an inherently suggestive process.
“The reliability of this identification was thereby compromised, and the witness’s prior description of the perpetrator could not be adequately tested or corroborated.”
Singh said Nanton’s death underscored the need for police to ensure key eyewitnesses’ statements are taken “with meticulous attention to detail and preserved in a manner that can withstand judicial scrutiny.
“The failure to contain the risks to this witness and the lack of measures to ensure that her statement was detailed, chronological, and clear at each stage of the identification process represent an unacceptable dereliction of duty.
“In a case where the prosecution relied entirely on the testimony of a single eyewitness who told the police she was afraid for her life – then she never lived to testify – the police had a duty to leave no stone unturned in recording her statement."
Instead, she said, the investigation and the case were full of "oversights, omissions, and lost opportunities," and
the State’s case was undermined "to the point where I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Frankie Bartholomew is the shooter.”
Bartholomew was released after the judge gave her verdict.
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He was represented by attorneys Wayne Sturge, Danielle Rampersad and Enrique Singh.
Norma Peters, Keston Abraham and Teriq Smith prosecuted for the Office of the DPP.
In July 2023, Bartholomew and five others were acquitted of the 2009 murder of Chivon Israh Lewis, aka Tupac, in Morvant. He was not immediately released because he was awaiting the retrial for Mark’s murder.
Days later, his attorneys rushed to court seeking emergency relief after he was stabbed and almost strangled in an apparent attempt on his life in his cell at the Maximum Security Prison in Golden Grove, Arouca. The Commissioner of Prison was ordered to ensure his safety and security by putting him under 24-hour surveillance by prison officers.
