‘Maximum of anything’

WESTERN BUREAU:

“I am tired, I am weary, but even though I am crying, I am joyful. We are overjoyed.”

That was the immediate reaction of Nickeda Gray, the aunt of 15-year-old Shineka Gray who was stabbed to death in 2017, moments after a seven-member jury issued a guilty verdict yesterday for taxi operator Gregory Roberts, the man who was on trial for the teenager’s murder.

Outside of a brief and barely controlled sobbing fit when the verdict was issued before presiding High Court Justice Bertram Morrison, the elder Gray was largely composed as she spoke on behalf of the family regarding their reaction to the verdict.

The jury, consisting of four men and three women, arrived at the verdict after 85 minutes of deliberation following the close of Justice Morrison’s summation of the case.

“We have been fighting this, and it has been seven years, and I think seven was the number because it has been seven weeks we’ve been doing this, and we’re in the seventh year, and let me tell you, I know normally we’re supposed to have 12 jurors but there were seven,” Gray told The Gleaner.

“I think they made the best decision of putting away Gregory [Roberts]. Gregory does not need to be on the road, otherwise we would have similar occurrences,” Gray added.

“He came, and he created a show in the courtroom. He tried to take over the case, and I sat there and I watched them [Roberts’ defence team] as they put together their case and tried to put in some things that were not relevant. But today justice prevailed.”

Prior to the verdict being announced, Justice Morrison concluded his instructions as to how the jury should conduct their deliberations by reminding them that they must consider all the evidence which has been presented since the trial began on November 23, 2023.

“You have to decide if his defence has been made out ... is it that Gregory Roberts, in his innocence, is saying that he was framed? You put that side by side with what the witnesses were saying. You must decide, if you can, on a unanimous verdict, that is to say, a verdict on which you all agree,” said Morrison.

“He is not obliged to prove his innocence, but you are to take into consideration what he has said. If you are left in doubt as to whether he was involved in the killing of young Shineka Gray, that doubt will have to be resolved in his favour,” Morrison added. “Even if you reject his version of events, you will still have to go back to the prosecution’s case to be sure if you are satisfied.”

When the jury later gave its verdict, Roberts sat down calmly in the prisoner’s dock and watched the proceedings, although at one point he leaned in to whisper to his attorney Chumu Parris.

But Gray was not quite so calm as she made it clear what she hopes for Roberts, whose sentencing hearing will be relocated from the St James Circuit Court to take place before the Trelawny Circuit Court on March 7.

“I am praying for a maximum of anything. He stood there, he had a chance to say what it was, and he refused. Maximum of anything, that’s what Gregory deserves,” Gray said resolutely.

The verdict comes five days short of the seventh anniversary of Shineka Gray’s death, after she was stabbed multiple times in Irwin, St James, on the night of January 29, 2017. Her body was found three days later, on February 1 that year.

In a tragic case of irony, the younger Gray, who was a grade 10 student of the Green Pond High School in St James, was last seen alive on January 29, 2017 while returning home from the funeral of a schoolmate.

During Roberts’ trial, the prosecution presented evidence from 16 witnesses, to include testimony from communication analysts, as well as cell-phone text messaging logs and call data in the hours leading up to the fatal night of January 29, 2017.

Several of the text messages which were shown throughout the trial included increasingly threatening messages between Roberts and his ex-girlfriend, as well as between Roberts and the ex-girlfriend’s mother, suggesting that he was going to make a ‘sacrifice’, suggesting that he was going to video-record himself doing something ominous, and accusing the ex-girlfriend of conning money from him and refusing to repay it.

A civilian witness also told the trial that Roberts came to him sporting bloodstains on his hands and shirt, and that he showed the witness a video of himself, Roberts, stabbing the teenager.

Additionally, the court heard evidence from Mario Morrison, Roberts’ former co-defendant in the matter who pleaded guilty in September 2022, that Roberts had him record the incident after they picked up young Gray in Montego Bay and took her to Irwin.

Interestingly, in his unsworn statement from the prisoner’s dock, Roberts told the court that he had been hired to provide transportation to Morrison and two other persons on the night of Gray’s death.

However, Roberts did not mention Gray at any point in his account of events.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com