The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

KENDAL and Christine Rolle were relieved last April when Coroner’s Court jurors found that a police constable killed their son unlawfully.

But, in the nine months since then, their relief has turned to anguish.

The Office of the Attorney General has not made a public move in the case and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has not charged the officer with a crime.

The lack of closure, the will-they-or-won’t-they questions that persist, are taking their toll on the Rolle family.

Sometimes, the grieving mother says, all she can do is cry. “I work for myself, and sometimes I’m serving my customers and the tears are uncontrollable and I’m there trying my best to console myself, to wipe my eyes, but they just keep coming,” she said.

Police were searching for Nathaniel Miller when Osworth Rolle, 22, was killed in Nassau Village on November 30, 2016. He was shot three times, twice in his face and once in his chest. Police claimed he pointed a weapon at them during a foot chase.

Mrs Rolle and her husband met Director of Public Prosecutions Garvin Gaskin several weeks after five jurors returned an unlawful killing finding on April 9, 2019.

“He told us they hadn’t made a decision but there was one thing that left him uneasy,” Mrs Rolle said––a video of a witness confessing that her son pointed a weapon at police.

The video was not presented during the inquest.

“I said to him, ‘How come this video wasn’t presented in court when the trial was going on?’ They wanted us to view the video without our attorney being present. We refused to do that so we left. From then to now, we haven’t heard anything else,” Mrs Rolle said.

Confessions have a fraught history in the Bahamian criminal justice system, with frequent accusations that they are made after abuse and coercion. Just last month the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial for two men who had been convicted of a conspiracy to commit murder after concluding that a Supreme Court judge inadequately handled defendants’ and witnesses’ claims that they were beaten for testimonies.

In Rolle’s case, the witness testified during the inquest and said his taped confession was false, that he claimed Rolle had a gun because police threatened to charge him if he refused.

“The jury heard all sides and they made a determination,” said Romona Farquharson-Seymour, the Rolle family lawyer. “Moreover, the jurors’ verdict didn’t come down to that man’s evidence but to the trajectory of the bullets that struck Osworth.”

During the inquest, forensic pathologist Dr Caryn Sands testified that the bullets that struck Rolle travelled downwards to his body. Given Rolle’s height, the height of the officer and the circumstances of the shooting, Dr Sands said the downward trajectory of the bullets was unusual.

“Clearly whoever shot Osworth was above him, or at least the gun was above him. That is very inconsistent with this man facing the officer from however feet away and being parallel to him with a gun. That was the turning point in the inquest,” Mrs Farquharson-Seymour said last week.

She said even in the rare moments when jurors return unlawful killing findings against police, the system does not inspire confidence.

“They are an extension of the Attorney General’s Office, the police, so they build rapport with those offices. There is not enough independence or separation for (government lawyers) to go against them. It is very rare and that is why police act with impunity,” she said.

“So many times they bring cases where you are left holding your head wondering where is the evidence against the person and their response is, ‘let’s let the jury decide.’ So why the difficulty doing that here?”

Bjorn Ferguson, the lawyer for the officer, emphasised that getting an unlawful killing finding in the Coroner’s Court is one thing, but securing a guilty verdict in the Supreme Court once criminal culpability has been ascribed to someone is entirely different. Because the Coroner’s Court is designed to ascertain the basic facts of a matter and nothing else, experts still must sift through the evidence, consider people’s motives and decide if a charge is defensible, he said yesterday.

“The courts are already loaded with too many matters that need to be disposed off and the DPP has to be satisfied with whether or not they could convince a jury at the requisite standard that those officers conducted themselves unlawfully on that day in the process of doing their jobs,” he said. “There are stubborn facts in this case, like the fact that a loaded firearm was recovered and witnesses testified that the man had the deadly weapon. Furthermore, the whole issue of fear is subjective. The officer feared for his life. You could have a police officer, he has a loaded weapon and the perpetrator has a loaded weapon. The officer has a right to defend himself.”

Mr Gaskin did not return calls for comment.

Rolle’s parents say they just want answers so they could move to the next step.

“It ain’t a good feeling as a mother to wait this long,” said Mrs Rolle. “There are a lot of sleepless nights because your mind is just going, going, going and I think when you go through something like this, the quicker you deal with it, you can kinda heal, but the longer it goes on, the more the wound remains open.”

The parents are unsure if a failure to charge the officer would erase the satisfaction they felt over the Coroner’s Court finding.

“One thing I’m so happy about is that my son’s name was cleared because there were lots of rumours running around,” said Mr Rolle, who has a birthday on November 29, then faces the anniversary of his son’s death on November 30. “I don’t know if the system is there to protect its citizens. It seems like the system is there to protect the people in uniform. If they had shot my son and it caused me to stay away from my job and push my son in a wheelchair for the rest of my life just for him to be here, I would’ve done that knowing my son is still alive rather than to know my son is not here with us anymore and that his killer is free after the jury said what he did was unlawful.”