{"id":246115,"date":"2004-11-18T11:34:11","date_gmt":"2004-11-18T16:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2004\/11\/murder-acquittal-after-police-officer-fails-to-appear-in-court"},"modified":"2004-11-18T11:34:11","modified_gmt":"2004-11-18T16:34:11","slug":"murder-acquittal-after-police-officer-fails-to-appear-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2004\/11\/murder-acquittal-after-police-officer-fails-to-appear-in-court","title":{"rendered":"Murder Acquittal After Police Officer Fails To Appear In Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Andre Kikivarakis was acquitted of the murder of Wayde Clarke after a police officer who was supposed to have been the prosecutor&#8217;s material witness failed to appear in Supreme Court yesterday.<br \/>\n<P><br \/>\nThe verdict came on day three of his murder trial.<br \/>\n<P><br \/>\nPolice Constable 802 Sean Ferguson was to have been the prosecution&#8217;s most important witness. However, Prosecutor Vernal Collie told the court that all attempts to get the officer to the stand since the trial began have failed.<br \/>\n<P><br \/>\n&#8220;It appears that he is unwilling to attend court,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\n<P><br \/>\nHe said without Ferguson&#8217;s testimony the prosecution could no further with its case.<br \/>\n<P><br \/>\nJustice Anita Allen told the jury that in light of the situation she had no choice but to direct them to return a verdict of not guilty.<br \/>\n<P><br \/>\nHowever, she told the prosecutor that he should request a full investigation and report from the Commissioner of Police as to why a police officer would apparently refuse to make himself available, especially when he is aware that he is the material witness in a murder trial.<br \/>\n<P><br \/>\n<B>Source: Cara Brennen, The Tribune<\/B><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prosecutor Vernal Collie told the court that all attempts to get the officer to the stand since the trial began have failed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}