Supreme Court judge Justice Bertram Morrison on Tuesday pulled the first line of American writer Max Ehrmann’s classic poem Desiderata as he released a cop who was found not guilty of murder in the 2018 death of a St Catherine man.

“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence,” Justice Morrison told Detective Constable Shawn Pennington after telling the cop, “A jury of your peers found you not guilty, you are free.”

Pennington, who was tried in the St Catherine Circuit Court, was unanimously declared not guilty after a 24-minute deliberation.

According to the allegations, on February 24, 2018, sometime after 10:00 pm, gunshots were heard in Pusey District, Point Hill, St Catherine. Checks were made by residents who found Rishawn Oliver lying on the ground on his back in the road beneath a streetlight bleeding from the upper body and his mouth.

Oliver died from gunshot injuries and massive bleeding. Based on the post-mortem report he received 24 gunshot wounds, 15 of which were entrance wounds and the remainder exit wounds.

The prosecution had presented evidence in court of utterings at the scene. However, Pennington, who gave an unsworn statement from the dock, denied being at the scene, telling the court that he was at home on the night of the shooting and was not on duty. Pennington said he remained home with his mother until he got calls in the middle of the night summoning him to the station.

The cop said he submitted his service pistol for testing. Ballistic tests showed that none of the casings found at the scene matched that pistol. In addition, two balaclavas found on the scene, when tested, had no DNA belonging to the cop. He was therefore freed.

It was the second time Pennington was being freed in relation to that incident.

He was first arrested and charged by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) on February 24, a day after the incident.

The case was, however, dismissed by a parish judge in 2018 because of the judge’s interpretation of a Court of Appeal decision in a case that was brought against INDECOM by the Police Federation.

The Appeal Court had indicated in that judgement that INDECOM does not have the right to bring a charge of murder against a police officer, resulting in five cops, including Pennington, being freed of varying offences.

However, law enforcement sources said days after the decision of the Parish Court judge the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions ruled that there was sufficient evidence for the case to be put to a jury.