By Barbara Gayle, Staff ReporterA JUDGE'S directive to a jury to deliberate further and return in half an hour with a verdict in a murder case has led to the Court of Appeal ordering a retrial for Orville Fitzerald, otherwise called "Yellowman".
The jury had deliberated for three hours before without arriving at a verdict. They were sent back a second time and told to return in half an hour.
The court found also that the judge failed to give the jury a special warning how to treat the evidence of a witness who has an interest to serve.
Attorney-at-law Earl DeLis-ser, who represented Fitzerald, 35-year-old farmer of Castle Street, River Head District, St. Ann, had asked the court to find that the judge's remarks to the jury as to the time to return could have the effect of pressuring the jury to return a verdict.
The Court of Appeal, comprising President Hon. Ian Forte, Mr. Justice Algernon Smith and Mr. Justice Karl Harrison (acting), on Tuesday allowed the appeal, ordered a retrial and promised to give its reasons in writing at a later date.
LIFE IMPRISONMENT
Fitzerald had appealed against his conviction and sentence. He was convicted by a jury in the Home Circuit Court on September 21, 2001. Miss Justice Kay Beckford sentenced him to life imprisonment and recommended that he should serve 25 years before he was eligible for parole.
Fitzerald and Dean Salmon were charged jointly with the murder of 20-year-old Marlon Brown, otherwise called 'Blacks', whose body with stab wounds was found in a septic pit at the back of a club at 82A Waltham Park Road, Kingston 11, on December 17, 1999. Salmon pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should serve 25 years before parole.
