Murder accused in Shineka Gray case to stand trial September 20

WESTERN BUREAU:

GREGORY ROBERTS, the man accused of the 2017 murder of 15-year-old Green Pond High School student Shineka Gray, will have to wait for another six months for his case to proceed to trial. He has been in custody for the past six years.

Roberts, who is represented by attorneys Chumu Parris and Leroy Equiano, was remanded in custody on Wednesday after a failed bail application on his behalf in the St James Circuit Court.

Parris made the application before presiding High Court Justice Andrea Thomas after the court was told that Equiano, who joined the proceedings via Zoom, would not be available to attend court on Roberts’ behalf in July as the prosecution had previously proposed. The date was changed to September 20 to facilitate him.

“Mr Roberts is asking if, in the circumstances, bail would be considered for him. He has been in custody for six years, and he is at his wits’ end. The reasonable timeframe for a murder matter to be tried is five years, and he has exceeded that,” Parris told Justice Thomas.

“Having to wait six more months for trial, how do we communicate that to this man who has spent six years in custody? How do we show that we appreciate this amount of time that has passed? To tell him to wait again is not a demonstration of that,” added Parris.

In responding to Parris’ request for bail for Roberts, Thomas cited previous court hearings where Roberts was described as likely to interfere with the case’s witnesses if granted bail, a concern which was reiterated by the prosecution during Wednesday’s proceedings.

“There are certain factors that would have entered into the judge’s consideration for denial of bail. I do not think that the delay in itself would mean an automatic granting of bail,” said Thomas, “We will set the matter for priority on September 20, so the Crown must do what it is supposed to do,” Thomas added, before ordering that Roberts be remanded in custody.

The September 20 date was also chosen to allow the prosecution to determine what it will do concerning a police witness who has since resigned from the Jamaica Constabulary Force, an issue that arose when Roberts was last before the court on Monday, March 6.

Roberts and another defendant, Mario Morrison, were arrested and charged in relation to Gray’s murder after the 15-year-old schoolgirl’s body was found on February 1, 2017, with multiple stab wounds in bushes in Irwin, St James. Morrison pleaded guilty in September 2022 and was sentenced one month later to life imprisonment.

Gray, who was a grade-10 student at Green Pond High School in St James, was found dead three days after she had been reported missing. In a tragic case of irony, she was last seen alive in Montego Bay while on her way home from the funeral of a schoolmate.