The Tribune

By FARRAH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

fjohnson@tribunemedia.net

THE Court of Appeal yesterday quashed the 28-year sentence of a man who was found guilty of trying to kill another man over five years ago.

After delivering their decision, the appellate panel of justices said the man is to be retried before another judge in the Supreme Court at the earliest convenience.

In 2015, Joseph Dickerson was accused of shooting another man multiple times at close range. During his trial, the victim’s father testified that he saw Dickerson shoot his son.

Dickerson maintained that he was not in the area at the time of the shooting and insisted he was being framed by the victim’s father who he alleged was a criminal “who had been shot previously” and came from a criminal family.

Despite his defence, Dickerson was convicted of attempted murder two years later and sentenced to 28 years imprisonment in February 2018.

He recently appealed his conviction on the grounds that the circumstances of the case made the verdict unsafe and unsatisfactory. He also argued the prosecution’s failure to disclose the antecedents of their two key witnesses to his defence counsel “greatly” impacted the fairness of his trial.

Yesterday, Justices Roy Jones, Milton Evans and Carolita Bethell quashed Dickerson’s conviction and sentence after ruling that the jury had a right to be informed of the “true facts” in the “interest of justice”.

In their judgment, delivered by Justice Evans, they noted: “Before the case was put to the jury for their deliberation all parties concerned knew that the complainant and his father both had antecedents. This was consistent with the evidence of the applicant which had been challenged by the Crown as a lie.

“In not allowing the evidence relative to the antecedent reports before the court, the learned judge deprived the applicant of the central plank of his defence. The way the matter was left, it was open to the jury to believe that the applicant was lying when he said (the father) had antecedents and that there was no real evidence that any of the witnesses had a criminal background as alleged by the applicant.”

Justice Evans said it was important to note that “in the absence of that evidence,” it was possible for the jury to assume Dickerson was being dishonest when he stated that the victim’s father did have antecedents.

“As such the absence of that evidence was doubly prejudicial to the applicant in a case which turned on the credibility of the witnesses,” he stated.

“...In the circumstances as I have found them I would grant the extension of time within which to appeal; allow that appeal, quash the conviction and sentence and order that the applicant be retried as soon as is practicable before a different Judge of the Supreme Court.”