Lawyers make case for acquittal of men accused of murder

(CNS): Both Antasacio Rankine (30) and Roland Welcome (33) declined to give evidence on their own behalf this week and left it to their lawyers to make the case for acquittal of the murder charges against them. One defence attorney said the crown came “nowhere near” proving its case, and neither man was required to prove his innocence. The crown contends that Rankine and Welcome murdered Sven Connor in December 2023 at his home in East End. The case is based on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of an anonymous witness. However, no forensic evidence links the men to the killing.

Connor was shot through his bedroom window at his home on Fiddlers Way as he lay on his bed at around 9:50pm on 7 December 2023. He tried to get away after he was hit by one of the bullets by moving through the house, but the killers used two guns and fired multiple shots through the window, penetrating through walls and cupboards and hitting Connor several times. His body was found on the kitchen floor by the stove.

Liam Walker KC, representing Rankine, said the crown had not proved its case against his client. They couldn’t because it wasn’t him. “Make no mistake, this was an atrocity,” he told the jury. He said the crown had made a case based on emotion and not evidence, and there was no evidence capable of convicting Rankine because he was not there and did not kill Connor.

The lawyer reminded the jurors of a long list of incorrect evidence that he said Witness A had given via video link, including an erroneous identification of one of the four men caught on CCTV footage that the crown says shows the killers plotting the murder. The anonymous witness testified that one of the men was Giovani Silburn, but it turned out that he was somewhere else at the time of the killing.

Silburn was caught on CCTV in central George Town outside a restaurant that night, some ten minutes after the shots were fired, which meant it was impossible that he was involved. But he, too, could have found himself in the dock if there had not been hard evidence to prove his innocence, Walker said.

Nevertheless, long after police had eliminated Silburn as a suspect, Witness A had insisted that he was one of the killers. Walker told the jury that eyewitness evidence must always be treated with caution when there is little else to support it.

In this case, the witness had testified that they had observed an altercation between Rankine and Connor some 20 minutes before the killing at a yard on John McLean Drive, not far from Connor’s house on Fiddlers Way. But the lawyer noted that the witness was a fair distance from the alleged altercation.

There were several indications from police interviews and things that were said that the witness may have been dozing while sitting on their porch looking into the yard where the fight was said to have taken place. In addition, it was a dark night and there were trees blocking the view.

The witness’s descriptions of both Rankine and Welcome were incorrect or incompatible with other evidence, getting their height, appearance and the clothes they were wearing wrong, Walker said.

Witness A also claimed to have seen Connor leave the area after the fight on John Mclean Drive in a truck, yet the owner of the yard and the man Connor was visiting at the time said he had arrived and left on his bicycle. That witness said he had not seen the fight because he had gone inside at the time to take a shower.

Walker said that, given the number of known errors, the witness could have been wrong about many other things, including seeing Rankine fighting with Connor and moving away from his house immediately after the shooting.

Several days after Witness A had identified Rankine, an off-duty officer told detectives conducting the murder inquiry that he had seen Rankine in that same yard that night. But that officer also said it was only a glance as he was driving and did not see Rankine doing anything in particular.

The lawyer argued that the evidence of Witness A had “contaminated” the case because the police then looked for ways to support it after the error over Silburn. He also pointed out that Rankine had gone to the police voluntarily when he heard they were looking for him in connection with this killing, something that guilty murderers are unlikely to do.

Walker argued that it is impossible to identify any of the men on the CCTV footage who appear to be the killers. They all have their faces covered and the quality of the footage is such that it is impossible to tell who anyone is. He urged the jury not to be swayed by the crown’s emotive declarations, which were not evidence and did not assist them.

He asked the eight women and four men to consider the evidence properly and analyse it closely. If they did, he said, they must conclude that Witness A made many mistakes, and even if there is just a possibility that Witness A’s evidence that they saw Rankine might be wrong, they should acquit him.

When Welcome was interviewed by the police, he was sweating and shaking as the officers asked him questions because he was coming down from several weeks on crack. He had also been on the run from the police for unrelated crimes and was homeless at the time. He told the police he had been “smoking a lot of crack” in the weeks before his arrest and it was clear he was in a vulnerable position, Walker told the court.

When he finally admitted he was on the CCTV video, the idea that he had pulled Rankine away from a fight was not evidence the jury could rely upon, Walker said. This was not just because of his state of mind and his crack addiction but because it was the police who said he had done that. He had not denied it but nor had he given any account of it.

Walker argued that there was no forensic or direct evidence against Rankine because he did not take part in the conspiracy to murder Sven Connor and he is not one of the men in the video on which the crown has made its case. “The evidence gets you nowhere near guilt,” Walker said as he made his final bid to the jury that they must acquit Rankine.

While Welcome has admitted being on the CCTV video, he has said that he was coerced into being a lookout but had not done anything. Charles Miskin KC, who is representing Welcome, told the jury that his client was not present on the CCTV when a gun is passed between the remaining three men and there is no evidence at all that he was aware of what they were doing.

Miskin said Welcome was a “vulnerable person, a loser and a crack addict who found himself in a difficult predicament” after he came across the men, whom Welcome has described as the type of people you need to be afraid of. Miskin said that in order for him to be guilty of murder, he had to be properly involved with the plot to kill and be aware of the intentions of the others, which he was not.

Welcome has no beef with Connor, who was a friend and neighbour, someone he had known all his life, Miskin said. Given his addiction and the problems he had, Welcome’s claims that he was just told to watch out for police but had no idea why was plausible. There is nothing on the video to indicate otherwise and no witnesses to him doing anything wrong.

Other than admitting to speaking to the other three men caught on CCTV who are believed to be the killers, there is nothing to suggest he was involved, Miskin argued.

In the CCTV footage, the men are seen huddled together, which the crown says captured them plotting to kill Connor, but Welcome is seen leaving the huddle well before the other men and in a different direction.

After shots are fired, he is the first to reappear on the video and is seen collecting things he left at the spot where the men had talked and then running away again before the killers reappear from a different direction. Miskin said that Welcome had admitted being around Fiddlers Way that night, looking to buy cocaine because he was dealing with a full-on addiction and “vulnerable to pressure”.

While he had lied to police at the beginning of the interview, the lawyer said that was just “bog standard”, stupid lies based on self-preservation and part of his vulnerability and addiction. When he admitted to being at the location looking for crack and having been on a drug bender, he made it clear he was afraid of the men for good reason. As a person with a criminal background, he was in a position to know who he should be afraid of and who he should still be afraid of.

Miskin implied that this was why he had chosen not to give evidence. The lawyer pointed out that on the street, loyalty rather than honesty is often the option that people choose for reasons of self-preservation. “He was a loser caught up in circumstances beyond his control,” Miskin said as he also urged the jury to acquit his client.

Following legal directions from Justice Cheryll Richards, who is presiding over the case, the jury is expected to begin deliberations on Thursday.

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