Vendor freed after four months in custody due to cop’s ‘lie’

A St Andrew vendor, who spent almost four months in custody before he was freed last week of a robbery charge, is making a special plea to the police “not to tell lies” on innocent persons.

Kimani Pusey, 43, is also imploring the police to investigate cases properly because innocent people who are falsely accused and locked up can be “scarred for life”.

“I have been severely affected mentally, emotionally, and financially by the terrible ordeal I went through, all because of a policeman who told a vicious lie on me,” he said.

Pusey, of a Washington Boulevard address in St Andrew, was identified by a policeman as the person who committed a robbery, but the judge said the policeman’s evidence did not make the court feel sure of Pusey’s guilt.

The allegations were that on December 30 last year, Pusey, who was armed with a gun, robbed a taxi driver of $18,000. The taxi driver said he was not able to identify the robber.

A policeman who was inside the taxi at the time of the robbery did not make any attempt to foil the robbery because of fear for his life.

Five days after the robbery, the policeman testified that he was on patrol duty when he saw the robber who he identified as Pusey.

King’s Counsel Peter Champagnie represented Pusey, and during cross-examination, referred to several inconsistencies between the policeman’s evidence and the statement he had written in relation to the robbery.

Pusey had denied committing the robbery and called a character witness.

Champagnie argued in the Gun Court that based on the inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case, Pusey should be freed.

The judge agreed and freed Pusey, who had been in custody since January.

‘Horrible’ experience

Commenting further on his ordeal, Pusey said it was only through the mercy of God that he managed to come out of the lockup alive. But one of the things he said bothered him was the fact that with the recent amendment to the Firearms Act, he could have received the mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment “all because of a lie”.

Pusey said he was in custody at the lockup at the Hunts Bay Police Station in St Andrew and shared a small cell with 12 other prisoners. He referred to the conditions there as deplorable and disclosed that cockroaches were crawling all over the place, night and day.

“Horrible, horrible,” is how he described the situation in the cell, adding that no human being should be subjected to such deplorable conditions.

“The lies the policeman told on me caused me to lose my dignity, which I am fighting really hard to recover, but it is going to take time,” he said.

“I will be eternally grateful to lawyer Champagnie who represented me and did an excellent job in seeing to it that I got justice, and the lies by the policeman were revealed in court,” he emphasised.

Pusey is adamant that he should be compensated for the wrong done to him as well as for humiliation, loss of dignity, and financial losses. He said he was at a club at the time of the robbery and was nowhere in the vicinity where the incident took place.

“I think CCTV cameras should be installed on every street because more crimes would be solved and innocent people like me would not have to be falsely accused,” Pusey said.

Champagnie has previously been noted for unearthing the inaccuracies in claims made by the police in other cases in the Gun Court.

In April 2021, the attorney visited a crime scene while a trial was taking place in the Gun Court. This was after two police inspectors testified that they had searched 32-year-old bearer Raheem Panton and found him in possession of a firearm and ammunition.

While at the scene, a resident asked Champagnie what he was doing there, and when he told her about the case, she showed him a video of the incident, which she had captured on her mobile phone. When Champagnie returned to court and one of the inspectors was recalled for further cross-examination, on being shown the video recording, he admitted in court that the gun had not been found on the accused.

Panton, who had been in custody for more than a year, was then freed.

In response to the incident, the Police High Command promised to launch an inquiry into the matter with a view to having disciplinary proceedings initiated against the policemen.

editorial@gleanerjm.com