Policeman back on the job after 19 years

Police Constable Lescene Edwards, who has been off the job for 19 years, returned to work last month following his murder acquittal in April by the United Kingdom Privy Council, which is Jamaica's final court.

“I am feeling very good to be back on the job, but it cannot suffice the long suffering I went through all those years,” Edwards said this week.

However, Edwards has pledged to do his very best to serve his country.

Edwards, 53, who is being represented by King's Counsel Valerie Neita Robertson, is looking forward to compensation from the Government for the ordeal he went through.

In freeing Edwards, the Privy Council recommended that the Jamaican authorities compensate him for constitutional breaches and for the miscarriage of justice that was done.

The government was criticised by the Privy Council for its lack of resources to provide expert evidence for accused persons and breaches of the Constitution in relation to trial within a reasonable time.

Edwards' trial took place 10 years after he was charged.

The Privy Council found that there was no challenge to Neita Robertson's statement that “independent forensic experts whether on ballistics, GSR (gunshot residue) blood splatter or handwriting are not available in Jamaica.”

Edwards was convicted in 2013 for the murder of 23-year-old Aldonna Harris, who was the mother of his twin girls. Her body was found with a suicide note beside it at her home in Pembroke Hall, St Andrew, in September 2003. She was fatally shot four weeks after she got married to a man who lived abroad.

Harris and Edwards were involved in a relationship for four years and they continued the relationship after the marriage.

Edwards said in his defence that he was sleeping when he heard an explosion and saw Harris with a firearm in her lap.

He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment and ordered to serve 35 years before he could be eligible for parole.

The Court of Appeal reduced the sentence to 20 years before parole.

Fresh evidence before the Privy Council from scientific experts showed that Harris was seated on the bathroom floor with her back against the closed door and there was no satisfactory explanation regarding how Edwards would have been able to murder the deceased in that confined space.

The Privy Council ruled that based on the fresh evidence, the conviction was plainly unsafe.

-Barbara Gayle

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