Dawson, who testified from the dock, told the court that on the night in question, he was at another nightclub, Fullington, and not Bismark. To prove his alibi, he called a witness, Mark Flowers, who said that he and Dawson were at Fullington club that night.

This is the second time that Dawson was being tried for the murder. Two years ago, on February 18, 2004, the first trial began, and Dawson was found guilty of manslaughter, the alternate charge to murder.

The Court of Appeal (COA), however, ordered a retrial based on the fact that the jury had emerged two minutes before the prescribed time, coming out at 3 hours 58 minutes. The time to deliberate for murder is four hours, and two for manslaughter.

On February 17, a day before the first murder trial began, sometime around 1:00 a.m., the chief witness, Nikolai Lewis, was shot in the neck. He succumbed to his injuries nine days later. Dawson?s brother, Jason Paulino, was arrested for that murder and his murder trial is pending.

Lewis? testimony was accepted as evidence in the hearing after it was learned that he indeed had died and could not testify.

Anthony Sylvestre was Dawson?s lawyer, and Cheryl-Lynn Branker Taitt represented the prosecution.