Providenciales, Turks and Caicos, November 29, 2017 – The Prosecution will have to find stronger witnesses and better evidence in its case against Cortez Simmons as yesterday the Appeals Court gave them another chance to secure a murder conviction.
In one of the most followed murder cases in recent TCI history, a verdict came from the Appeals Court that was both a sigh of relief and a victory. Cortez Simmons won his appeal but was not acquitted, instead a retrial in the murder of Keziah Burke is ordered by the court.
Simmons had been acquitted before of murder, that was in 2009 and the victim then was the first cousin of Keziah Burke. Simmon’s defense team argued that the evidence in the Burke murder was circumstantial and refuted expert testimony and findings that the gun used in the killing of Burke, who was 25 at the time was the same gun used in a shooting at the movie cinema where Simmons was allegedly caught on CCTV with the shooters in that case.
During the trial in 2015, it was revealed that Keziah Burke was gunned down in the parking lot of Uncle Dough’s Bar in Providenciales, while trying to escape – on hands and knees – being shot by the accused Cortez Simmons in the back, allegedly. The report says the shooting unfolded in plain sight of multiple witnesses, but no one was talking.
Evans Welch, attorney from Trinidad and Tobago, led the prosecution team which used as its star witness, a man who was a part of the cinema shooting, Haitian-born, Boker Odema. Odema testified that the gun used at the Digicel Cinema, was taken from Cortez Simmons and that after the shooting then, Simmons demanded his gun back.
It is said that gun, a 40 caliber weapon, was the same one which ended the life of Burke on April 13, 2013. Our understanding is that there were as many as 20 grounds in the appeal, all of them against the trial judge – Margaret Ramsey Hale. The conviction was deemed unsafe and was overturned in a matter of minutes.
Arguments by the defense team including Alvin Garland and Jacqueline Samuels Brown, QC out of Jamaica lasted longest on whether Simmons was due an acquittal or a retrial.
Cortez Simmons can apply for bail and be freed until the retrial date is set.
