A Laven­tille man has been freed of mur­der­ing a fel­low res­i­dent in 2009 af­ter the State’s main wit­ness ad­mit­ted he had lied.

Ash­ton “Doi Doi” Med­i­na spent more than 16 years on re­mand be­fore he was found not guilty of mur­der, at­tempt­ed mur­der, and shoot­ing with in­tent at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Trevor Jones ear­li­er this week.

Med­i­na was ac­cused of mur­der­ing 20-year-old Ken­roy Joseph on April 26, 2009. Joseph, of Priz­gar Lands, Laven­tille, was dri­ving his car in Suc­cess Vil­lage when a gun­man opened fire on him.

Joseph, who sus­tained sev­er­al gun­shot wounds, was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

Med­i­na was ar­rest­ed days lat­er af­ter Joseph’s friend, Ja­son Hi­lar­ie, told po­lice he had seen Med­i­na shoot­ing at Joseph. Hi­lar­ie re­peat­ed that claim dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry be­fore a mag­is­trate but changed his ac­count dur­ing Med­i­na’s tri­al.

He tes­ti­fied that he and Med­i­na were mem­bers of ri­val gangs and that he had fab­ri­cat­ed the al­le­ga­tion. Hi­lar­ie al­so ad­mit­ted he wait­ed three days be­fore re­port­ing the in­ci­dent to po­lice be­cause he need­ed time to re­hearse his false sto­ry.

While be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by Med­i­na’s at­tor­neys—Se­nior Coun­sel John Heath and Karunaa Bis­ram­s­ingh of Al­lum Cham­bers—Hi­lar­ie fur­ther ad­mit­ted that he had vis­it­ed Med­i­na in prison be­fore the tri­al and con­fessed what he had done, say­ing he want­ed to “purge” his con­science.

De­spite the ad­mis­sion, State pros­e­cu­tors suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied to have him de­clared a hos­tile wit­ness, al­low­ing his pre­vi­ous po­lice state­ment and his tes­ti­mo­ny in the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry to be con­sid­ered.

In their clos­ing sub­mis­sions, Med­i­na’s at­tor­neys raised con­cerns about the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of Hi­lar­ie’s pur­port­ed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and not­ed that in­ves­ti­ga­tors failed to probe Med­i­na’s al­i­bi—that he had been smok­ing mar­i­jua­na with a friend along the East­ern Main Road in Laven­tille at the time of the shoot­ing.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Jones ex­am­ined the plau­si­bil­i­ty of Hi­lar­ie’s ini­tial ac­count. He not­ed that Hi­lar­ie said he left home af­ter re­ceiv­ing a text mes­sage from Joseph at about 9.34 am, and that po­lice re­spond­ed to the shoot­ing on­ly six min­utes lat­er.

Jus­tice Jones ob­served that Hi­lar­ie had con­sis­tent­ly main­tained it would take ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes to walk from his home to the scene of the shoot­ing. The judge point­ed out that this ev­i­dence was nev­er chal­lenged, and pros­e­cu­tors did not call an­oth­er wit­ness to pro­vide a dif­fer­ent time es­ti­mate.

Jus­tice Jones found that, based on the tim­ing is­sue and his in­abil­i­ty to ac­cept that Hi­lar­ie could have wit­nessed the shoot­ing, he could not be sure Med­i­na was re­spon­si­ble, as there was no oth­er ev­i­dence link­ing him to the crime. - Derek Achong