Wristwatch murder accused freed on no-case submissions

Justice James Bovell-James yesterday upheld no-case submissions in the High Court trial of Alan Wills who had been accused of killing a Bagotstown man over a wristwatch.

Though Wills was freed of the murder charge he was not released because of a previous criminal matter.

Wills was accused of killing Kenneth Richardson of Bagotstown on July 13, 2004 in the East Bank Demerara village.

Wills’s defence counsel, Leslie Sobers in his submissions had raised questions about the identification parade which he said was flawed. Sobers even called a witness who had been on the parade to show the jury how unfair the line-up was based on the ethnicity of the men.

During the trial the prosecution witness, Latetia Burnett, who had testified to seeing her husband gunned down, provided a physical description of the shooter but gave conflicting evidence under cross-examination.

However when Burnett initially took the stand she told the jury that two men, one of whom was the accused, confronted her husband on the day in question. According to her, the accused shot her husband twice before relieving him of a wristwatch.

Based on the woman’s testimony the wristwatch appeared to have been the reason why Richardson was killed.

Prosecutor Donelle Harding-Hawke appeared for the prosecution.