By Barbara Gayle, Staff ReporterTHREE MEN have been freed by a jury of the murder of electrician Bertram Dolphy, 48, of Bridgeport, St. Catherine on June 6 last year.
They are Clive Cespedes, 42, interior decorator from Kingston, his son, Lenoid, a 20-year-old student pilot, of Gregory Park, St. Catherine and Marlon West, 22, interior decorator, of Golden Spring, St. Andrew.
The men were accused of beating Dolphy after Clive Cespedes' pick-up hit Dolphy's motor car along the Dunbeholden main road, St. Catherine.
Selma Dolphy testified at the trial in the St. Catherine Circuit Court that after Cespedes' motor vehicle hit her husband's vehicle, he tried to overtake the pick-up to see if it would stop.
He was not successful so he followed the pick-up and pulled up alongside it at the intersecton of Dunbeholden Road and the Spanish Town bypass. An argument developed between the three accused who were occupants of the pick-up van, and her husband. During the argument, she said, West hit her husband several times with a spirit level a tool used by masons in his head.
She said her husband called to a man to give him a machete and that while he had the machete in his hand, the three accused began throwing stones at him. One of the stones caught him in his head.
A crowd gathered and several persons held on to Lenoid and West and handed them over to the police. Cespedes drove to the police station.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
Under cross-examinaton by attorney-at-law Earl Hamilton, who represented West and attorney-at-law Lancelot Clarke, Jnr., who represented the other two accused, Mrs. Dolphy admitted giving a previous statement to the police that all four men used the level to beat the deceased in the head. She admitted giving a previous statement that her husband was hit by two stones in the head.
The medical evidence indicated there was no sign of a beating with a level to the head. There was only an injury above the left eye which could have been caused by a stone or the deceased falling on concrete. Death was caused by an injury to the head.
The three accused denied throwing stones or using a level to hit the deceased in the head. They said it was the deceased who armed himself with a machete and chopped at Cespedes who was sitting in the pick-up.
The deceased then turned the machete inside the vehicle and used the blade to jab the younger Cespedes in his back, injuring him. West said that it was a man who was travelling with them in the pick-up who threw a stone at the deceased when he saw that Cespedes was being attacked. West said the stone hit the deceased in the head and he fell to the ground.
Acting Justice Paulette Williams presided at the trial.
