A jury is to go into its third day of deliberations in the trial of a man alleged to have gunned down another as he sat at a picnic table.
The jury told Justice Cheryll Richards on Thursday afternoon that they had not reached a verdict and they were told to return to court on Friday morning.
It is alleged George Orlando Senior, 36, murdered Divonte Hernandez with a single shot fired in a car park off Sound Way in George Town.
Co-accused Bianca Vega, 34, with whom Senior has a child, is charged with being an accessory after the fact by hiding him in an apartment owned by her family and supplying him with food and clothes.
Hernandez died after he was hit in the chest by a bullet as he sat at the table at a car park near the intersection of Shedden Road and Eastern Avenue.
Barnaby Jameson, for the prosecution, earlier in the trial told the court that it was the Crown’s contention that Senior, 36, an admitted ganja dealer, was in a Honda Fit car that parked near the scene of the shooting, and that he got out, wearing a mask and a hoodie, and gunned Hernandez down.
But Senior insisted in court he was just the driver of the car and that he was transporting two men, said to be Jamaican, known to him as ‘Skippa’ and ‘Cheese’, who were collecting debts.
He told the court earlier he had met the two as he did a drugs deal for $10,000 worth of ganja on the day of the killing and that his supplier, called ‘David’, had asked him to drive the pair as a favour.
He said that he did not know that the other two men had guns until after he had reluctantly agreed to drive them and that Skippa had got out of the Honda, walked the short distance to the car park and shot Hernandez.
Justice Richards, summing up the case to the jury earlier, told them that the argument from Senior’s counsel was that the defendant was too afraid for his own safety and the wellbeing of Vega and their child to go to the police.
She added that the two men, Skippa and Cheese, had warned Senior they had “connections” in the Cayman police and that they would know if he made a report.
Vega’s defence counsel argued that she did not believe that Senior had committed the murder.
Richards also told the jury that they might want to consider that Senior had said in evidence that he had no “hostile view” of Hernandez.
The jury was also told by Richards that the prosecution had to prove that Vega was sure that Senior had murdered Hernandez to convict her of being an accessory.
Richards added, “The prosecution must show that, because of the circumstances and because of what the defendant Ms. Vega saw or heard, the only reasonable belief was that Senior had done it.”
She said, “If Ms. Vega only thought he might have committed the murder, that would be only suspicion and would not be enough to prove that she believed he had done it.”
Richards added it was the jury’s duty to weigh the evidence against Senior, which was circumstantial, and his co-accused carefully.
She said the jury had to put aside any prejudices or sympathies they might have for anyone involved in the case.
“It’s important you judge calmly, dispassionately and logically, based only on the evidence you have heard,” she told the jurors.
The trial continues.
