Floridian Daniel Ayo walked out of the courtroom a free man after being discharged of murder following the Attorney General’s decision to discontinue prosecution against him.
Ayo was on trial for the May 12, 2010 murder of Jamaican Clyde Tomlison in Bimini.
To Ayo’s delight, last Friday, prosecutor Linda Evans entered a nolle prosequi (no prosecution) motion, which withdraws the murder charge against him.
Defense attorney Wayne Munroe admitted that the nolle prosequi motion allows for the possibility that his client, Mr Ayo, could be tried again in the future but says that is very unlikely.
“I would think it would be for the reason this matter was discontinued, the matter won’t be brought back.
“Again, as I say, the decision, to my mind, was taken because the Attorney General felt that no productive use would be made of consuming more court time and more expense with this trial,” Mr Munroe said.
After five days of trial and testimony from ten witnesses, the outcome of this murder trial before Justice Vera Watkins rested on the action that Attorney General Allyson Maynard Gibson decided to take.
Justice Watkins accepted the nolle prosequi application and told the jury that because of the action by the Attorney General, their services were no longer needed.
She then turned to Mr Ayo, telling him: “The Attorney General has made a decision to discontinue the charge of murder against you. As a result, I am to inform you that you are formally discharged and free to go.”
Legal observers said the case was dismissed because the victim was a Jamaican and the government did not want to spend the time and resources obtaining justice for a foreigner.
In another court, the murder trial of Kevin Dawkins ended in an acquittal on Friday with jurors returning an 11-1 verdict.
Dawkins, 27, who is black, was accused of the murder of Jamaican Fitzroy McDonald.
Mr McDonald was the fiance of Dawkins’ former girlfriend, Kimberley Morgan. McDonald met Morgan when she was on vacation in Jamaica in August 2009 — a month after breaking up with Dawkins.
Morgan, a 50-year-old Caucasian woman with waist-length blonde hair, said that Dawkins broke into her home at Cave Hill Road in Gregory Town, Eleuthera, around 11:00pm on November 19, 2009.
Morgan testified that she ran into the bathroom and leaned against the door to keep Dawkins out. However, Dawkins, a former Defence Force marine, overpowered her and entered the bathroom where he proceeded to choke her and stab her in the face and neck with a cooking fork.
Ms Morgan was able to bend the tines on the fork and escape through a window, as Mr McDonald came to her rescue.
She said as she was fleeing, she saw Dawkins’ hand moving in a stabbing motion over McDonald.
Police later found McDonald lying in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds to the neck and shoulder.
Early on the morning of November 20, police said they saw Dawkins on Morgan’s property with a butcher knife that came from her kitchen.
He jumped into the sea from a nearby cliff and swam with the knife, according to police.
Police pursued Dawkins by boat and ordered him to drop the knife before they brought him in the boat.
Dawkins’ lawyer, Murrio Ducille, said that Morgan could not be believed.
Playing on the racist, anti-foreigner sentiments of an ignorant, xenophobic Bahamian jury, Ducille compared Morgan to the infamous Annie Palmer, who was known as the White Witch of the Rose Hall plantation in Jamaica.
Ducille said Morgan, like Palmer, had destroyed every man that she had come into contact with.
Despite overwhelming evidence that corroborated Morgan’s testimmony, Ducille was successful in getting the jury to ignore the facts and decide with their emotions.
Prosecutor Jillian Williams said Ducille had not addressed the central issues in the case. She said that Morgan was not on trial for her relationships or love of younger black men.
She said Dawkins was so obsessed with Morgan that police found him “lurking” on her property hours after the murder.
She said Morgan’s evidence was substantiated by the testimony of other witnesses and physical evidence. She said police confirmed that Morgan made a complaint about Dawkins trespassing on her property several hours before the murder.
Jurors were shown photographs of bruises on Morgan’s neck.
Prosecutor Williams said police retrieved the bent fork and the butcher knife that was recovered from the sea shortly after Dawkins dropped it there.
Again, legal observers say the reason for the acquittal had to do with the Bahamian jury’s disdain of Jamaicans and foreigners.
