Two brothers had a murder charge against them dismissed when they appeared before Magistrate Crystal Lambert recently at the Bartica Magistrate’s Court.
Randel Layne and Mario Moses of Goed Intent, West Bank Demerara, were indicted in December 2022 for the murder of land surveyor Ricky Ambrose and had been remanded to prison.
Dismissing the charge, Magistrate Lambert stated that during the committal proceedings the burden lay with the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the written statements and recording of the accused pointing to the spot where the alleged crime was committed were voluntarily provided.
However, during the preliminary inquiry where everything else was based on sufficiency, when it came to caution statements and the admissibility of such there are certain criteria to be met. In those circumstances, she said, the court will not revisit the ruling and she dismissed the case.
Moses and Layne were charged with murdering Ambrose on December 18, 2022 on the Guana Sand Trail, Cuyuni River, Region Seven. The brothers, who are both gold miners, were not required to plead to the indictable charge. They were remanded to prison.
The prosecution had claimed that when the brothers were questioned they told investigators that Ambrose went to their mining camp and told them that they had to move from the land on which they were working. They alleged, according to the police, that Ambrose shot at one of their pumps and issued a threat about what he would do if they were still there when he returned.
Detectives said the brothers told them that they armed themselves with two pieces of wood and went to the trail where they waited for Ambrose behind a tree, struck him off his ATV and several times about his body.
They were represented by Attorney-at-law Yuborn Allicock.
