QC accuses judge of bias in murder case

Brian O’Neill QC

(CNS): A leading British QC pulled no punches when he appeared before the appeal court Friday and accused the judge in the 2014 trial of Raziel Omar Jeffers, who was convicted for Damion Ming’s murder, of bias. Brian O’Neill QC said that during his summing up Justice Malcolm Swift had “scuttled” the defence case with “inappropriate comments, unfair and unbalanced directions, and a bias towards the crown”.

The visiting QC hails from the same London-based chambers as Justice Swift, who was also visiting as an acting judge on the local bench for last year’s trial. But that did not prevent O’Neill from condemning the summing up and directions that his colleague had delivered at the conclusion of the evidence last April following a two week trial, describing the summation as an “old fashioned hatchet job”.

O’Neill did not defend Jeffers (31) at trial but during this session of the appeal court he was instructed by local attorneys from Samson and McGrath to present the West Bay man’s appeal. He said that the trial defence attorney had raised concerns about the summing up but the judge’s comments went beyond repair and telling the jury panel it was a matter for them could not undo the damage.

Jeffers was found guilty of shooting and killing Ming because of jealousy over a love triangle, fuelled by gang rivalry. When the verdict was delivered, the judge had expressed his agreement with the jury’s findings and described him as a “cold blooded killer”.

The conviction was based largely on evidence from Jeffers’ ex-girlfriend and Ming’s former lover. She told the court that during a weekend he had spent with her at Ocean Club days after the murder Jeffers had confessed to the killing at 177 Birch Tree Hill Road, West Bay.

During his presentation of the appeal O’Neill said the crown had a very weak case against Jeffers and that the crown’s telephone evidence supported his claim that he was elsewhere in West Bay at the time of the crime just as much as it did the prosecution’s case.

The QC said that evidence of other suspects had been dismissed by the judge, who “repeatedly strayed beyond the limit of fair judicial summary” when directing the jurors.

O’Neill said a witness had seen two men in a silver car at the time of the shooting when the crown’s case was that Jeffers acted alone and arrived by bike. But the judge had created a “new route to conviction” when he had commented that these men could have been Jeffers’ “back-up team”, even though the prosecution had never presented such an alternative.

Pressed hard by the appeal court panel, O’Neill stood his ground and argued that Swift had decided Jeffers was the killer and had made the jury know it, giving more of closing speech than a summary of the case and ignoring evidence that supported Jeffers’ claim that he was not the gunman.

“There has been a substantial miscarriage of justice,” he said, as asked the appeal court to quash the verdict.

In response, Andrew Radcliffe QC, ironically also a member of the same Hare Court chambers as O’Neill and Swift, presenting the case for the crown, urged the court to uphold what he said was a safe conviction. The judge had not shown bias but had merely followed the strength of the evidence, based on telephone records and the crown’s key witness, he said.

Radcliff argued that the judge had done his job and had not dismissed alternative evidence. The judge had made it clear that the evidence relating to two men in a silver car may support the defence, he said, or the men could be the people who Jeffers himself had said he was with on the night of the shooting. The crown’s lawyer said the judge had not created a new route but accurately directed the jury.

Presenting some of the evidence again and arguing that the crown’s case had always been strong, Radcliffe placed considerable emphasis on the telephone evidence against Jeffers, which O’Neill had dismissed. He said it was not just about his movements but the fact that Jeffers was unable able to answer a key question at trial when he gave evidence on his own behalf.

He told the appeal panel that in the immediate wake of Ming’s killing, the owner of the yard where the shooting took place was overheard taking a call from someone and saying, “Yes, he has already called to see if he is dead.”

Radcliff said at that point few people knew there had been a shooting, let alone a murder and phone records showed that the only call to that man’s phone before the one overheard was from Jeffers. Radcliff said the only possible conclusion was that the witness had heard the owner talking about a conversation with the killer — a point Jeffers had conceded at trial — and therefore the killer had to be Jeffers.

Following the close of arguments Friday and the end of this appeal session, the judges said they would aim to deliver their decision in August.

Jeffers was handed a mandatory life sentence for Ming’s killing when he was already serving a life term after being convicted of the 2009 murder of Marcus Ebanks at a Bonaventure home in West Bay the year before. Jeffers and another unidentified gunman were said to be aiming at another gang rival when they opened fire on a group of boys outside the home. A previous appeal in that case was dismissed.

Some four months after his conviction in the Ming case, Jeffers was on trial for a third murder. In August last year he was convicted by a jury of the manslaughter of Marcus Duran. An Ecuadorian national, Duran was a ‘numbers man’ involved in the local illegal gambling racket who was gunned down outside a West Bay apartment in Miliwanis Way in what police believed was a robbery gone wrong.

The crown said Jeffers may not have been at the scene of the killing but had planned and coordinated the robbery and supplied the guns in what prosecutors claimed involved as many as five men. No one else has ever been convicted in the case. Jordan Manderson, also from West Bay, who was only 15 at the time of the crime and who was shot in the foot at the scene, was charged but acquitted of murder following trial in 2011.