Jury foreman’s “love note” to DPP causes jury discharge
Posted: 24/07/2009 - 10:13 AM
Author: Aaron Humes
A “love note” addressed to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Cheryl Lynn Branker-Taitt, cost her a murder case in Dangriga Town this morning.
Jorge Pinzon, 42, was charged with murder just over a year ago after a post-mortem on his late girlfriend, Soila Ramclam, 35, found that she had died as a result of a close-range gunshot wound to the chest.
Pinzon, a Venezuelan businessman of Punta Gorda Town, initially told police that he and Soila had just come in from celebrating her birthday and he was cleaning his 9mm pistol while seated across from her, when the gun accidentally discharged and hit her in the chest.
To make matters worse, he claimed, he drove his pickup into a lamppost by accident and had to use another vehicle to get her to the Punta Gorda Hospital, from where she was transported to the Southern Regional Hospital in Dangriga, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
Today, “two weeks of work fell apart,” in the DPP’s words. Justice John “Troadio” Gonzalez, the presiding judge, was preparing to sum up the case when a member of the jury, identified as its foreman, handed a note he had written to the DPP to a policewoman in the courtroom and instructed her to pass it to her.
This evening, the DPP told us by telephone that when the policewoman attempted to hand her the note, she told her: “Are you out of your mind? Don’t you know there cannot be any contact between the counsel and the jury?”
At this point, Branker-Taitt said, a court marshal who had seen the attempted handover intervened and censured the police officer for her behavior, and the DPP asked him to hand the note to Justice Gonzalez.
Upon receiving the note, Justice Gonzalez called the DPP and Pinzon’s attorney, Simeon Sampson, into chambers and there revealed the contents of the note. According to the DPP, this was the first time she saw what was inside, as she had not handled the note when the policewoman was trying to pass it to her earlier.
Unfortunately, the note’s contents, while not “suggestive” as the DPP told us, wrecked her case, as the foreman professed “admiration” for her and said he was “impressed with her intelligence,” among other like comments.
High praise indeed, but to Justice Gonzalez, the comments constituted possible bias on the juror’s part, and he elected to discharge the jury and order a new trial for Pinzon.
It’s an unusual way to lose a case, and the DPP called the situation “a personal embarrassment” and an “unfortunate occurrence.”
Pinzon will likely face trial again in the next session of the Supreme Court in the South, sometime later this year.
(7 News’ Jules Vasquez provided additional information for this story.)
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