Attorney: Tesha Miller should be freed because of ‘prejudice’

CONVICTED GANGSTER Tesha Miller should be freed because of ‘prejudice’ from a witness’ claim at the trial that he led the Clansman Gang and that the group used extortion money to pay lawyers to defend members, a lawyer has argued.

Attorney John Clarke, who is representing Miller, also told the Court of Appeal yesterday that his client was exposed to injustice when the witness, a former member of the gang, claimed that Clansman is responsible for the deaths of 13 members of his family over a two-year period.

“The prejudicial evidence led in this particular case was severely overwhelming, incurably wrong and unfair to the accused and that based on that, this court cannot be satisfied that at trial no miscarriage of justice had occurred,” Clarke told the three-member panel of judges.

Miller is appealing his conviction for ordering the 2008 murder of Douglas Chambers, the then chairman of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC). Trial judge Georgiana Fraser sentenced him in January 2020 to roughly 39 years in prison.

The thrust of Miller’s appeal is that the judge acted “unfairly” in a series of instances, including in the handling of a sentencing hearing involving the witness.

Fraser reduced the man’s life sentence for a murder to 10 years after he entered a plea deal with the prosecution in Miller’s case. He later testified that Miller ordered another gangster, Andre ‘Blackman’ Bryan, to kill Chambers. Bryan was acquitted.

The defence lawyers claim the trial judge wrongly chose not to recuse herself from conducting Miller’s trial and fell into more errors over her treatment of claims from the witness, Miller’s lawyers, and her summation and directions to the jury.

DAMAGED CHANCES

At yesterday’s second day of the appeal hearing, Clarke argued that the witness’ claims damaged his client’s chances at justice and the judge or ‘umpire’ did little to rescue the matter.

“The oblique attack that lawyers are paid extortion money would have been so devastating to the accused and to the fairness of the trial that the protestation by the accused lawyer…was important,” Clarke said, referring to senior lawyer Bert Samuels who argued Miller’s case in the Home Circuit Court.

Clarke said the judge’s initial reaction and the response of the prosecution “did not truly appreciate the mischief” of guarding against the introduction of evidence unrelated to the allegations against an accused, and which could influence a jury.

“This was further compounded by the material led for the first time in the middle of the trial that Miller would have been responsible, essentially, for the deaths of 13 members of [the witness’] family. That information was strictly not relevant to any issue… and ought to have been excluded,” Clarke added.

The judge reportedly told the jury to discard the claim.

Miller was convicted on charges of accessory before the fact to murder and accessory after the fact to murder in December 2019.

But his other attorney, Isat Buchanan, argued that if the trial judge had properly considered a no-case submission, Miller’s case would not have gone to the jury.

Noting that the man accused of Chambers’ murder (the principal felony) was freed, Buchanan told the appeal court the charges against his client should have been dismissed based on his view of Section 35 Criminal Justice Administration Act.

The clause says a person who orders a crime “shall be guilty of felony, and may be indicted and convicted either as an accessory before the fact to the principal felony, together with the principal felon, or after the conviction of the principal felon, or may be indicted and convicted of a substantive felony…”.

“There can be no accessory before the fact after the principal has been acquitted,” Buchanan said, adding that “the rule at common law, which is uncontroverted, is that where there is no conviction of the principal, there can be no conviction of the accessory. When the law was codified, it did not upset the common law rule...”

Buchanan agreed with justices Jennifer Straw and David Fraser who questioned whether, based on his argument, the only option available after Bryan was acquitted was for Miller to be charged for murder.

But he said the Crown chose not to opt for that choice.

The State’s response to the appeal is being led by Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn. She is yet to reply.

Miller’s lawyers are to continue submissions today.

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