Labourer, Parmanand Rambarran, who police had said killed 50-year-old Triumph resident Christopher Findlay, has been discharged of the capital indictment after a no-case submission was upheld in his favour.
His defence attorney, Stacey Goodings, had presented to Justice Simone Morris-Ramlall during the trial, that given the evidence before the court, the prosecution could not establish a prima facie case against her client.
She argued that he therefore had no case to answer.
Following a voir dire, the Judge ruled in favour of the defence that the prosecution had failed to establish a case against the accused and therefore would not be required to answer to the charge.
In the circumstances, the Judge directed the jury to return a formal verdict of not guilty in Rambarran’s favour.
The matter was concluded on Tuesday.
The State was represented by prosecutors Caressa Henry, Delon Fraser and Madan Rampersaud.
Background
Rambarran called ‘Flushing,’ a labourer of Kadoo Street, Triumph, East Coast Demerara, had been accused of murdering Findlay called ‘Andy,’ on December 11th, 2020.
The police had said that Findlay, who was last seen by a neighbour about 8am, had a misunderstanding with a friend. When the neighbour checked on him at about 12pm, he discovered him lying on a bed motionless with wounds to his left eye, face and one of his elbows.
Findlay was taken to the Beterverwagting Health Centre, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
A post-mortem examination conducted revealed that he died due to blunt trauma to the head.
Pastor Patrick Findlay, an older brother of the deceased, had told Stabroek News that he was alerted about minutes to 12 by one of the neighbours, who informed him that his brother had been beaten up by ‘Flushing.”
He said that he was told to hurry over to the house immediately and when he arrived at the scene he found his brother lying on the bed.
“I recognised him immediately and after looking at him about 20 seconds I realised that he was dead. And so I came out of the house and I cried and afterwards I called the police and they came and conducted their investigations,” the man had said.
After realising what had happened, he said, he noticed chop wounds on one of his brother’s arms and head.
Shortly after his arrival, he said, he was told that his brother had been involved in a scuffle with somebody from the same community and it seemed that the suspect chopped him and left him there to die.
