Appeal court overturns cop’s unlawful wounding conviction
Published:Wednesday | November 15, 2023 | 12:05 AMBarbara Gayle/Gleaner Writer
District Constable Dean Hyman, who was convicted of unlawful wounding and sentenced in February 2021 to two years’ imprisonment at hard labour, has been freed by the Court of Appeal.
He had given verbal notice of appeal and was granted bail pending the outcome of his appeal.
On December 8, 2016, Hyman and a woman were on a staircase at Big Youth Plaza in Christiana, Manchester, when his firearm went off, resulting in the woman being shot and injured in her thigh.
Hyman called for help and the police arrived and took him and the woman to the hospital, where she was treated.
The Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) intervened in the matter and Hyman gave a statement that the shooting was accidental.
The complainant gave a statement to INDECOM on December 20, 2016, stating that she and Hyman were good friends and they were hugging when she felt Hyman using the gun to touch her left thigh. She then heard what sounded like a gunshot.
However, at the trial, the complainant testified that Hyman was an arm’s length from her, was being verbally abusive, and took his firearm from his waist and shot her.
After the Crown closed its case, attorney-at-law Norman Godfrey, who represented Hyman, made a no-case submission that the complainant’s evidence was discredited because it was inconsistent with her statements to INDECOM and that no explanation was given for the divergent accounts.
Godfrey said the prosecution had not negated the accident.
Godfrey had argued at the trial that the INDECOM officers had no power to arrest and charge Hyman, but the parish judge rejected the submission. Godfrey raised the point on appeal, and the Crown, which was represented by prosecutor Judi Ann Edwards, conceded.
One of the grounds of appeal was that the parish judge erred in law when she rejected the appellant’s no-case submission and, thereby, deprived him of a fair trial.
In upholding Godfrey’s submissions, the Court of Appeal said that the parish judge “was plainly wrong to have accepted and relied on the evidence of the complainant to call upon the appellant, and having done so, to have convicted him without resolving the inconsistency in the complainant’s evidence ... “.
The forensic report showed that blood was on the appellant’s gun.
The Court queried whether blood was more likely to get on the gun if the complainant was shot while they were hugging or while they were at arm’s length.
“The answers to these questions become relevant when one considers the conflicting evidence given by the complainant,” the court held.
The Court of Appeal – comprising Justice Frank Williams, Justice Carol Edwards, and Justice Marcia Dunbar-Green – in allowing the appeal on November 10, said, “In the final analysis, we agree that the verdict is unreasonable and is not supported by the evidence and there is [a] risk of a grave miscarriage of justice.”