Sun | May 31, 2026

Mario Deane’s mother the first witness in trial of three cops

Published:Thursday | March 6, 2025 | 1:06 PM
Mercia Fraser, the mother of Mario Deane, speaking outside the Westmoreland Circuit Court on Monday, March 3, 2025, following the empanelling of jurors for the trial of the three police officers who are charged in relation to Deane's death in 2014.
Christopher Thomas
Mercia Fraser, the mother of Mario Deane, speaking outside the Westmoreland Circuit Court on Monday, March 3, 2025, following the empanelling of jurors for the trial of the three police officers who are charged in relation to Deane's death in 2014.

After more than 10 years of waiting, the trial of three cops implicated in the 2014 death of Mario Deane finally began in the Westmoreland Circuit Court today, with evidence being heard from the prosecution’s first witness, Deane’s mother Mercia Fraser.

The trial of Corporal Elaine Stewart and Constables Juliana Clevon and Marlon Grant officially began following this morning’s empanelling of a juror to round out the trial’s seven-member jury, replacing one who was excused by High Court Justice Courtney Daye on medical grounds.

During her evidence-in-chief, Fraser told the court how she went to the Cornwall Regional Hospital in St James on August 3 and 6, 2014, where she identified Deane on both occasions.

In between moments of tightly-controlled emotion, Fraser testified that on August 3 that year, she saw Deane in a hospital bed, attached to medical drips and a life support machine, with swollen features and a dark mark on his neck and cheek.

She also testified that she next visited Deane on August 5, prior to his death at the hospital the following day. She told the court that, following her son’s death, she attended his autopsy at the hospital on September 2, where she again identified Deane.

Under cross-examination from Clevon’s lawyer Dalton Reid, Fraser said that she last saw Deane in April 2014, when he visited her at home, and that she would periodically visit his home in Rose Mount, St James.

The trial will continue on Friday morning, with a police witness expected to testify for the prosecution.

Stewart, Clevon, and Grant are charged with manslaughter, misconduct in a public office, and taking steps to pervert the course of justice, under allegations that they were on duty at the Barnett Street Police Station lock-up in Montego Bay, St James on August 3, 2014, at the time when Deane was reportedly beaten while in custody there.

It is also alleged that Stewart, the senior officer on duty, ordered the cleaning of the cell where the beating took place before investigators from the Independent Commission of Investigations arrived.

- Christopher Thomas

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