Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
THE TWO men who were sentenced in March last year to hang
for the 1999 murder of 20-year-old Tahj Burrell and 22-year-old Jason Eldridge have been freed by the Court of Appeal.
They are Carl McHargh, 32, also called 'Omar', customs broker, of 17 Durham Avenue, Kingston 6, and Brian Rankine, 26, also called 'Marlon', of Cockburn Gardens, Kingston 11.
McHargh, who was represented by Frank Phipps, Q.C., and Rankine, who was represented by attorney-at-law Earl DeLisser, had appealed on the grounds that the Crown's case was weak and there was no eyewitness to the murder. The lawyers argued that the police statement and deposition of the main witness for the Crown which were tendered in evidence could not be relied on because the witness could not be relied on.
They said the witness gave a statement while he was in custody charged with a serious offence. The witness said he had overheard a conversation in relation to Burrell's murder.
CONVICTIONS QUASHED
Yesterday the Court of Appeal, comprising Mr. Justice Seymour Panton, Mr. Justice Algernon Smith and Mrs. Justice Zaila McCalla, quashed the convictions and set aside the death sentences.
The Crown led evidence at the trial, which began on February 23, 2004, that jealousy was the motive for the murder based on a close 'social' relationship which Burrell had with McHargh's former girlfriend. The woman who was engaged to McHargh had broken off the relationship with him some time before July 1999.
Burrell, son of Captain Horace Burrell, former president of the Jamaica Football Federation, and Eldridge, son of Noel Eldridge, retired Assistant Commissioner of Police, were gunned down at the Northside Plaza, Liguanea, St. Andrew, on the night of July 25, 1999. They had gone to buy pizza.
McHargh was said to have been the one who plotted to murder Burrell, and Eldridge was killed because he was in Burrell's company at the time and would have been a potential witness.
