C.Roy ReynoldsDEFENCE COUNSEL Allen for Roubal ended his address to the jury on June 20 with an impassioned plea. According to a report in The Gleaner on June 21 he said:
"Are you going to convict this man on tainted evidence like Miss DaCosta's or Perez's or Diaz's whom Roubal had to say was of such low grade, the man who when on board the ship was asked to do, and so pointed out the sailor who had helped him to escape.
"Will you sink this man in suspicion and drown him in more prejudice! On the oath you have taken and the evidence taken before you, you alone must decide this case, and I submit with confidence that on this evidence, you can come to only one verdict and that is 'not guilty'. Stick to your honest convictions for it is your responsibility individually and collectively... You cannot hang a man on suspicion, and there is nothing more in this case against Roubal but suspicion".
Counsel for the co-defendant Diaz, Mr. Campbell, went even further. He asked the judge to throw out the case against his client and instruct the jury to return a not guilty verdict... He was informed by the judge that the time to have made a "no case" submission was at the end of the Crown's case. But though counsel cited a number of cases as precedence, his request was denied.
Addressing the jury, he pointed out that horrible though they were, there was no eyewitness to the murders. The Crown's case had relied entirely on circumstantial evidence, and in such cases the matter of motive was very crucial. On the evidence presented, the jury would have to decide if a reasonable motive had been established.
He appealed to the jury not to be influenced by public sentiment. "The public mind has been greatly incensed because of this diabolical murder and robbery, but the public might be incensed without sufficiently weighing the evidence or seeing both prisoners in the witness box. The public is not today trying these men. You alone can decide."
He told the jury that it was the absent Maspon who had instigated and carried out the murders. His client was guilty of burglary but not murder. Had he been an integral part of the whole conspiracy to rob and murder, surely he would have received more than the one hundred dollars Maspon later gave him. The sum was consistent with his claim that he had been engaged merely as a doorman. And for that onerous but menial task, they gave him $100 of the $3,000 they reaped. He also pointed out that Diaz had made no attempt to alter his name and his passport.
Crown prosecutor Radcliffe naturally saw things differently. He told the jury that he like they, regretted that the man Maspon was not also in the dock facing the charges. But they had heard from the mouths of both accused, their step by step involvement in the plot that led to the murders. He asked the jury to consider that the reason Roubal did not insist that Diaz was at 16 South Camp Road that day was that he claimed not to have been present himself and to claim that Diaz was would destroy his alibi.
"I am sure you regret Maspon is not standing or sitting in the dock with the other two men. Probably you think with me that Maspon was an arch-fiend in the plot, that he was the evil genius in the whole of the day's happening." But, he said, he has not been held, but the two men charged were up to their neck in the deed that culminated in the murders. As for the claim of Diaz that he heard laughter coming from the house on the day of the murders, how comes he heard laughter and the neighbours heard groans!
In the case of Roubal could it be only circumstantial that his dagger was the murder weapon and he was in possession of it the very day the murders were committed.
But Radcliffe did more than excoriate Roubal and Diaz. He took time out to exonerate witness Elsie DaCosta, agreeing with her contention that she was terrified of what would have happened to her had she gone to the police in advance or subsequent to the killings. Radcliffe concluded his marathon address in mid-afternoon on June 21 and this was followed by the judge's charge to the jury which we shall examine in the next instalment.
