Man convicted from dying victim's statement
Published:Saturday | February 13, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
A woman's dying declaration has led to one of her killers being convicted last week in the Home Circuit Court.
Dalton Reid, otherwise called 'Brass', labourer of Panton Lane, Old Harbour, St Catherine, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday for the woman's murder.
Supreme Court judge Gloria Smith, in passing sentence, ordered that Reid serve 25 years before he was eligible for parole.
A jury convicted Reid on Monday of the murder of Cheryl Powell of Succaba Gardens, Old Harbour.
There was no eyewitness to the murder but the prosecution relied on the dying declaration given shortly before Powell died to prove its case against Reid.
The Crown, represented by attorney-at-law Kathy Pyke and Crown counsel Michele Salmon, led evidence that Powell was at her home in Succaba Gardens on February 17, 2002, when Reid and another man fired shots, killing her.
A policeman testified at the trial that he saw Powell shortly after she was shot. She told him she was dying and gave a statement in which she said that it was Reid and another man who came to her house and shot her. Powell said she knew Reid before and said they had lived on the same street.
Reid, in his defence, said he had nothing to do with the woman's murder.