Attorney Clover Graham’s murder case to start Thursday
Published:Wednesday | January 11, 2023 | 1:27 AMTanesha Mundle/Staff Reporter
The long-awaited trial of the St Catherine labourer charged with the murder of attorney-at-law Clover Graham is scheduled to start on Thursday in the Home Circuit Court.
Quron Patterson, otherwise called 'Q', of Gordon Pen in Spanish Town, St Catherine, had his bail extended on Monday when he appeared in court.
The university lecturer was found with her throat slashed in bushes at Caymanas Estate, St Catherine, on August 19, 2012, hours after she was reported missing by her family.
The Crown is alleging that Graham, who was employed to the Legal Aid Clinic in Kingston, was taken from her home and then murdered.
An autopsy revealed that she died from an incised wound to the neck.
Patterson was among three men who were arrested and charged with murder and conspiracy to murder in October 2012 in connection to her killing.
But the other two defendants – Simeon Lewis, a contractor, and Shannon Campbell, a labourer, also from Gordon Pen – have since decided to give evidence for the prosecution.
Attorney-at-law Zara Lewis is representing Patterson.
Graham was a lecturer at The University of Technology, Jamaica, and the Norman Manley Law School on the Mona campus of The University of the West Indies.
She also worked as the United Nations High Commission on Refugees' honorary liaison officer in Jamaica.
Her murder came five years after her son Taiwo McKenzie and his girlfriend Jhannel Whyte were killed in a similar fashion by men who demanded a ransom after a motor vehicle crash.
The bodies with the throats slashed were found in bushes in Mount Salus near Smokey Vale, St Andrew, on November 9, 2007.
The couple – dubbed the 'Good Samaritans' – were kidnapped and killed when they went to deliver medical supplies to two men involved in a motor vehicle accident with McKenzie.
Andre Ennis and Shane Brown were found guilty of their murder in June 2012 and sentenced to 50 years to life.
However, their pre-parole sentence was reduced to 40 years by the Court of Appeal.