Trial to proceed for soldiers accused of killing businessman Keith Clarke

Justice Dale Palmer this afternoon ruled that the alleged murder case involving businessman Keith Clarke should proceed to trial.

The decision was made following the hearing of a voir dire, which was ordered by the Court of Appeal to determine whether the matter should proceed to a trial.

The case has been ongoing since 2012 when chief prosecutor Paula Llewellyn ruled that three soldiers, lance corporals Greg Tingling and Odel Buckley, as well as private Arnold Henry, be charged for killing Clarke.

The businessman was shot 21 times inside his home, located on Kirkland Close, in St Andrew, on March 27, 2010, during a police-military operation to apprehend then fugitive drug lord Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.

The murder trial was set to begin in 2018 when lawyers for the Jamaica Defence Force surprised prosecutors with immunity certificates that shielded the soldiers from prosecution for their actions during the operation.

The certificates were signed in February 2016 by then National Security Minister Peter Bunting. 

The signing of the certificate took place almost six years after Clarke's death and four years after the ruling by Llewellyn, the director of public prosecutions, that murder charges be laid against the soldiers.

But following a legal challenge, the Constitutional Review Court, in a majority decision handed down in February 2020, ruled that the certificates were manifestly unfair and unreasonable.

However, while overturning that decision in a judgment handed down in January last year, the Court of Appeal affirmed an order by the Constitutional Court that the trial should go ahead.

The court of appeal overruled that decision of the Constitutional Court, and upheld the validity of the good faith certificates issued by Bunting.

But, the Court of Appeal, Jamaica's second-highest court, ordered that before the trial begins, a voir dire or a trial within the trial, must be conducted by a judge alone to determine whether prosecutors “can rebut the certificates of good faith issued by the minister.”

- Tanesha Mundle

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