THE THREE policemen charged with the murder of 15-year-old schoolboy Jason Smith have been freed.
A Home Circuit Court jury, after retiring for three hours yesterday, freed Corporal Rudolph Rhoden, Constable Dwight Roberts and Special Constable Linton Pascoe, who are attached to the Special Anti-Crime Task Force.
Monica Williams, mother of the deceased wept when she heard the verdict. She said she was disappointed with the outcome.
Smith was fatally shot in Spanish Town, St. Catherine, on the night of July 9, 2002.
The Crown led evidence before Mrs. Justice Marva McIntosh and the jury that Smith was unarmed and was on his way from a shop with a bag containing banana chips when he was shot. Smith was being towed on a bicycle at the time of the incident.
UNSWORN STATEMENTS
The policemen gave unsworn statements from the dock in which they said they and other policemen were on mobile patrol in the area. They said they shouted "Police, stop" to the men on the bicycle but they did not.
They said the men shuffled in bags they were carrying and then fired at them. They said they returned the fire and afterwards discovered that one of the men was shot. They took him to hospital and the man turned out to be the deceased, Jason Smith.
Human rights lobby group Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ), which had taken a keen interest in the case, issued a statement yesterday that it was deeply disappointed with the not guilty verdict. JFJ renewed its call for an independent body to investigate police shootings.
The human rights group said it was "deeply disappointed that a 15-year-old boy can be killed, eyewitnesses give testimony in the courts that policemen ran him down and beat him and shortly thereafter they heard a shot and saw the police lift out his body and throw it in a jeep, that policemen admit on the same night they fired their guns and the forensic evidence supports their claim, and at the end of the trial no one is guilty".
The group said it was again calling for a properly staffed, funded and empowered independent body to undertake thorough, prompt and impartial investigations of all police shootings.
