Francis Eiley, Ernest Savery and Lenton Polonio, accused and convicted in 2004 of the November 2002 murder of Justo Jairo Perez on Ambergris Caye and sitting on death row since then, are now free after the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) allowed their appeals and directed that their convictions be quashed. The main accuser was Frank Vasquez.
The Privy Council judges criticized the handling of forensic evidence and witness identification at the trial, as well as trial judge John “Troadio” Gonzalez’ summing up, in which the judge needed to establish that the battle would be on the credibility of Vasquez’ version of events against that of the defense, as well as the various “implausibilities” in Vasquez’ evidence.
Instead, said the JCPC, Justice Gonzalez focused “unnecessarily” on self-defense and intention and glossed over the fact that while Vasquez identified the trio and former suspect, Marcel Bermudez, he did not say that they were the individuals he had seen kill Perez.
The JCPC found it “remarkable” that there was apparently no attempt to corroborate Vasquez’ evidence by means of questioning of other witnesses and standard investigation by police; while absolving Justice Gonzalez of responsibility for stopping the trial when it appeared Vasquez’s evidence was shaky, they felt Vasquez was simply covering for himself and that apparently turned the tide.
The Death Penalty Project, an international human rights organization that offers free legal representation to individuals facing the death penalty in the Caribbean and Africa and is based at London firm Simons, Muirhead and Burton, said in a press release that the convictions were quashed after the JCPC found that the nature of the evidence given by their main accuser, one Frank Vasquez, was “unsafe” and “suggested that his primary concern was to distance himself from involvement in the murder…”
Perez, a 63-year-old fisherman, was tied up, gagged and apparently beaten to death with a crowbar at his Pescador Drive home by several men who had broken in to get at a safe in the house in an apparent home invasion. Eiley, Savery, Polonio, Vasquez and Kevin Gonzalez, Jr., Perez’s grandnephew, were all subsequently arrested and charged with murder and conspiracy, but Vasquez later agreed to testify against Eiley, Savery and Polonio in exchange for immunity despite being “caught literally red-handed at the scene of the crime;” the JCPC called the decision of the prosecution to offer Vasquez immunity in exchange for his evidence on the witness stand “surprising”.
Attorneys Michael Grieve, QC, and Tom Allen represented the trio pro bono on behalf of the Project; the Belize Director of Public Prosecutions’ office was not represented at the trial in June of this year.
According to a copy of the judgment as received by Amandala today, Lord Phillips, speaking for the five-member Board of the JCPC, said: “The critical question is whether having regard to the nature of the evidence given by Mr. Vasquez, the circumstances in which it was given and the terms in which the judge summed up the evidence to the jury, the appellants’ convictions are safe. The Board has concluded that they are not.”
The judgment spent much time discussing the nature of the evidence provided by Frank Vasquez, who was found at the scene with a knife, his clothes apparently bloodstained. But he agreed to cooperate with police and immediately led them to the three defendants and a fourth man, Marcel Bermudez, who was later released after it was found he had nothing to do with the incident.
After giving a statement soon after the murder in which he implicated Eiley, Savery and Polonio in the murder while claiming he did not know what was going on until he was apprehended and accused of killing Perez, Vasquez signed an agreement with the office of the DPP in which he was granted immunity according to Section 95 of the Evidence Act, Chapter 95 of the Laws of Belize which allows for such pardons, but only on the order of a judge; no judicial order had apparently been made.
At the trial, Vasquez gave evidence against the three defendants in this case and Gonzalez in absentia in which he claimed to have looked on while they planned the burglary at a bar on the island and later accompanied them to the house as watchman. Vasquez claimed the blood on his clothes came from the blood-soaked jacket one of the defendants threw to him and that he had the knife since morning after using it to peel an orange, and denied lying to cover up what according to the defendants was actually a crime planned by him and his uncle Frederick Dougal (Vasquez claimed Dougal accompanied him to San Pedro and was present during the planning stages, but backed away from participation).
While all three defendants admitted they were on the island on the night of the murder, all said they were elsewhere when it occurred and only met together when they were pointed out by Vasquez and arrested.
Eiley, Savery and Polonio are scheduled to be released from prison as soon as an order of release from the Supreme Court is issued.