By Petulia Clarke, Staff ReporterDIRECTOR OF Public Prosecutions (DPP) Kent Pantry is yet to receive documented evidence from the coroner's inquest into the Braeton Seven case, eight months after the inquest ended.
This despite a request by Attorney-General A.J. Nicholson last month that a ruling be made soon, as time had passed under the law for a ruling to be made by the DPP.
Under the law, the DPP is required to give a ruling on the matter in a timely manner after the ending of the inquest. But, Mr. Pantry told The Gleaner yesterday that he had checked his desk up to yesterday morning and the file was yet to reach his office.
Mr. Pantry has the authority to review the depositions to see if anyone should be charged for the deaths of Christopher Grant, Tamayo Wilson, Andre Virgo, Dane Whyte, Lancebert Clarke, Curtis Smith and Reagon Beckford, who were shot dead during a police operation at 1088 Fifth Seal Way, Braeton Phase 3 on March 14, 2001.
The men were killed in a reported exchange of gunfire with members of the now defunct Crime Management Unit (CMU). However, a nine-month long coroner's inquest into the case ended in October 2002 with the jurors divided six to four - that no one was criminally responsible for the deaths.
STILL WITH TYPISTS
Resident Magistrate (RM) Lorna Gayle, of the Spanish Town RM Court, said yesterday that the information was still with typists who are "putting everything together" before submission to the DPP. "It should be finished soon, it has to be compiled we can't just put everything in a haphazard manner," she said.
Meanwhile, the human rights lobby group, Families Against State Terrorism (FAST), in conjunction with Amnesty International, has made an application on behalf of the families to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) - to which Jamaica is a signatory - to get a ruling on whether Jamaica has breached any convention on human rights pertaining to the right to life of the seven young men.
FAST chairperson Yvonne Sobers said yesterday that they expect that by August they will receive correspondence on whether the application has been accepted for review.
The police have held that they went to Fifth Seal Way to apprehend Christopher Grant, who was a suspect in the March 1, 2001 fatal shootings at the Above Rocks Police Station, St. Mary. During that incident, a gunman, alleged to have been Grant, killed retired Customs officer Dennis Betton and Constable Dwight Gibson, 39, and wounded a woman. The police claimed that when they went to Braeton to arrest Grant, the occupants of the house fired shots at them. The police fired back, killing the seven.
