Update | Prosecution was unable to prove soldiers in Keith Clarke case were the shooters

The three Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) soldiers charged in connection with the May 2010 shooting death of businessman Keith Clarke were today found not guilty after the prosecution was unable to pinpoint them as the shooters.

Lance Corporals Greg Tingling and Odel Buckley, along with Private Arnold Henry were being tried on murder charges for the May 2010 shooting death of the businessman.

The men were freed after Justice Dale Palmer instructed the seven-member jury to return a not guilty verdict after ruling this morning that the men did not have a case to answer.

“The Crown has several ingredients to establish but one of the essential ingredients to establish is that of identification of the person alleged to have taken the lives of the deceased. But the evidence in relation to identification remains below the standard that is required for me to call upon the defendants,” he said.

He said the Crown's case consisted mostly of circumstantial evidence and “taken together these bits of evidence have fallen short, below the legal standards.”

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He noted that Clarke's widow and daughter, who were present with him when he was shot, were unable to identify the men except to say they were soldiers.

Pointing to the evidence that Clarke had received 16 fatal shots to his back, the judge said that the jury, properly directed, could be satisfied that the intention was to kill the victim or to cause serious bodily harm.

“Keith Clarke is dead. The shooters intended to kill him or to cause serious bodily harm when they shot him 16 times in the back and that there was no lawful excuse,”  he said.

Clarke, a 64-year-old accountant, was shot multiple times inside the master bedroom of his Kirkland Close home on May 27, 2010, during a police-military operation to apprehend then fugitive drug lord Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.

Dr Dinesh Rao, the former chief forensic pathologist in the Legal Medicine Unit at the Ministry of National Security, testified during the trial that Clarke sustained 25 gunshot wounds. He noted that 16 of these shots were to Clarke's lower back, while the other injuries included gunshot wounds to his face, chest, and forearm. The forensic pathologist explained that Clarke died from traumatic shock caused by extensive damage to his lungs, heart, intestines and kidneys, resulting from multiple gunshots to his back.

Rao also supported the account given by Clarke's relatives that he was shot while climbing down from a closet with his back towards security force personnel who had entered his home.

Clarke's widow and daughter had also insisted that they were home alone with the businessman when they heard strange sounds and thought criminals were breaking into the house.

Among the other evidence was testimony from Brigadier Mahatma Williams, who commanded the JDF unit involved in the incident, and testified that an aerial video captured during the operation showed the soldiers acting in what he believed to be “good faith”.

Williams explained that the video depicted the soldiers coming under attack from insurgents inside the Clarke residence and that they followed standard military procedures.

He also stated that the JDF had relied on intelligence which led them to the premises, and that the team came under fire while approaching Kirkland Close.

Captain Kevin White, second-in-command at the Special Activities Regiment, also testified that the firearm and ammunition logbooks for May 2010 could not be found. However, White disclosed that he was able to locate dispatch books from earlier and later periods, ranging from early 2004 to early 2010 and from 2016 to 2020.

King's Counsel Peter Champagnie and attorney-at-law Jodian Hammitt represented Buckley while King's Counsel Valerie Neita Robertson and attorneys-at-law Kemar Robinson and John-Mark Reid represented Tingling.

Attorney Linton Gordon and his son, Obika, represented Henry.

Senior Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Jeremy Taylor, KC, led the team for the prosecution, which included Deputy DPP Latoya Bernard and Crown Counsel Dwayne Green.

- Tanesha Mundle