KINGSTON, Jamaica – Garfield Taylor is now a free man, after a jury found him not guilty of murder, stemming from a 2017 incident on Burke Road in Old Harbour, St Catherine in which Anthony Henry was fatally shot by gunmen.

Taylor was set free on Tuesday in the Home Circuit Court in Kingston, after his attorney-at-law, Donahue Martin Jr, successfully argued that there were inconsistencies in two statements given to the police by Henry, who later died in 2018.

It was alleged that Taylor, along with two other people, entered Henry’s house and shot him.

“The witness gave a statement on the day after the incident on November 22, 2017. He gave a further statement in November and he pointed out my client on an identification parade. The complainant died in April 2018. They put my client before the court for murder and they essentially proffered the statements in a paper trial. The law allows you to put in statements as evidence without the maker having to come to give the statement. In this case, the witness is dead,” Martin said.

“The issue at trial was that of identification and whether or not the witness could have made the observation he said he made. My argument was that It was a mistaken identity. I made the argument that it was unfair for the accused to be found guilty based on two statements that have a variation in it without the maker being able to reconcile the variation.”

Martin explained that in one statement, Henry said the men entered the house and he looked at them. In the second statement, Martin pointed out that Henry claimed that, “he heard the gate pull and when he turned around, they started firing on him”.

“That is what you call material inconsistency,” he added.

Justice C Wiltshire presided over the case.