Fri | Mar 29, 2024

Policeman freed of murder

Published:Friday | March 17, 2023 | 5:15 PM
The policeman stated that he acted in self-defence.

A jury has freed 50-year-old police constable Ransford Wisdom of the murder of St Ann resident Murphy Joe Charles who he said attacked him with machete in October 2010.

The judge had left the lesser offence of manslaughter for the jury's consideration but the policeman was also found not guilty.

Defence lawyer Oswest Senior-Smith had submitted at the end of the prosecution's case in the St Ann Circuit Court that Wisdom should be freed because the Crown could not negate self-defence but Justice Georgianna Fraser ruled that there was a case to answer.

The prosecution's case was that Charles was shot in the lower back in Pear Tree Bottom, Runaway Bay, St Ann on August 18, 2010 and died the next day in hospital.

A statement was read to the jury in which a witness said Charles had called her attention to his injury the night of the incident but did not answer her questions as to how or where he was shot.

The witness telephoned the Discovery Bay Police Station and made a report.

A bullet was extracted days later from the body of the deceased.

A ballistic test revealed that the bullet was fired from Wisdom's gun.

Wisdom, in his defence, gave sworn testimony that he left his station guard duty at the Runaway Bay Police Station without permission to get something to eat.

On his return, he did not report to his immediate supervisor that he had fired his private licensed firearm in an incident at the Pear Tree Bottom Fishing Village.

A call later came in from the Discovery Bay Police Station about a shooting and Wisdom said policemen from his station went to investigate.

Wisdom said further in his defence that while he and a female companion were sitting in his car, two male assailants approached them, he jumped from the car and shouted 'police, don't move.”

One of the men wielded a machete and he fired in the direction of the men and they ran away.

He said he did not know at the time that anyone was shot.

He said he did not make a report of the incident because he feared being charged with disciplinary breaches because he did not ask for permission to leave the station.

He said he eventually spoke to a senior police officer about the incident and that resulted in his firearm being tested.

The jury retired for 30 minutes before returning the not guilty verdicts.

- Barbara Gayle

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