-after hung jury
By Mandy Thompson
Cyon ‘Picture Boy’ Collier will have to face a new trial for the murders of two Victoria brothers, after a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on his guilt yesterday.
After over six hours of deliberation, the 12-member jury reported to Justice Diana Insanally in the High Court that eight of them had found the accused guilty, while four found him to be not guilty.
Collier will have to face a re-trial in the next assizes.
The jurors had initially returned to the courtroom after three hours of deliberations for advice from the court but Justice Insanally told them that they had to arrive at their own conclusion and could only be directed on areas of the law.
They were then sent back to the jury room, after which they reported the split on Collier’s guilt.
Collier, who is accused of killing Ray Walcott, called ‘Sugar’, and his younger brother, Carl Andrews, called ‘Alo,’ on September 23, 2006 at Victoria, East Coast Demerara, will be imprisoned until his new trial.
The state’s case, which was presented by prosecutor Judith Gildharie-Mursalin, was that the brothers were standing at the corner of a road watching a game of dominoes, when the accused, dressed in black clothing and with a gun slung across his back, allegedly rode up on a motorcycle, talked with them and then started shooting. Walcott and Andrews were fatally shot.
Collier, who was represented by defence counsel Lyndon Amsterdam, denied that he killed the two men. But in his caution statement, which was admitted as evidence in the trial, he admitted to killing the men over a gun which he gave one of them to keep and which was never returned to him.
After the trial, the father of the two brothers, Godfrey Andrews, was upset at the outcome of the trial and said that he is leaving everything in the hands of God.
