UPDATE: Guilty ... Jurors return 5-2 majority verdict in ex-cop's murder trial

Livern Barrett, Senior Gleaner Writer

Former police constable Mark Russell has been found guilty of the 2007 murder of an 18-year-old boy in Kingston.

Russell was convicted after the jury of five women and two men deliberated for nearly five hours in the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston.

The 34-year-old ex-cop, who was based at the Hunt's Bay Police Station in St Andrew, showed no emotions after the verdict was announced.

After more than four and a half hours deliberating, the jurors had earlier returned a split decision of 4-3.

They were given further directions and sent back to the jury room to reconsider their positions and soon after came back with the majority verdict of guilty.

Russell is to be sentenced on July 31.

During the trial, three members of the Jamaica Defence Force testified that they saw Russell place a police-issued M16 rifle in the hands of 18-year-old Ravin Thompson and took it back before the teen was shot several times on the sidewalk along Darling Street in downtown Kingston.

But the former police constable and his attorney, Michael Jordan, accused the soldiers of lying and concocting a story to deflect blame for the teen’s death.