‘George Bacchus’ murder trial aborted

Nov 13, 2008 News

The trial of Delon ‘Fatboy’ Reynolds who is accused of murdering self-confessed death squad informant, George Bacchus, has been aborted. When the matter was called yesterday in the Supreme Court, Justice Claudette La Bennett, who was presiding over the case, announced that the trial would be aborted but did not specify to the jurors the reason for the decision.

However, sources said that one of the jurors is related to a witness. The witness is reportedly one of the investigating officers in the case.

The jurors were yesterday discharged and Justice La Bennett said that the case will be heard at the next available sitting.

When the case began, defence counsel, Peter Hugh, had challenged the admissibility of a caution statement Reynolds had allegedly given to the police. According to the prosecution, Reynolds had signed a confession statement.

A voir dire (trial within a trial) was being conducted until yesterday’s decision to abort. Reynolds was previously before the High Court for the very murder but that trial had also been discontinued.

Bacchus was found dead in bed at his Princes Street, Lodge home on June 24, 2004 after he made bombshell revelations about a death squad operating in the city, for which he said he once gathered information. His brother Shafeek Bacchus had been killed a few months prior.

Funeral parlour co-owner Debra Douglas, and her nephew Fabian ‘Fabie’ Jessop, had been jointly charged with Reynolds with Bacchus’s murder but they were subsequently freed due to insufficient evidence.