Monrovia - State and defense lawyers in an on-going mercenary re- trial of 19 defendants have taken a week without selecting a single juror out of the nine jurors currently needed under the new juror law to hear and bring down a verdict at the end of the trial. A total of 15 jurors who assembled in the court last week when the case resumed were all disqualified by the two groups of lawyers mainly on pre-emptory ground (meaning not satisfy with the performance of the juror). The suspicion raised against the prospective jurors either by the prosecution and the defense stemmed from the confession a juror made when the case was first heard in the 2013 during the May Term of court that he was being approached by the prosecution to be bribed US$1,500 each to render a guilty verdict against the 18 defendants who are dominantly Grand Gedeans. Juror Jeremy Dweh alias Jeremy Neufville whom the prosecution had picked up for allegedly bearing two names, one Jeremy Dweh and another Jeremy Neufville told the court while under investigation by the court for tempering said that he was singled out among the 12 jurors at the time because he had refused to accept bribe from the prosecution. Juror Dweh told the court he had bear the two names during the time he was recruited as a juror because one of the jurors in the same group with him bears similar name. However, the prosecution lawyer and also County Attorney Daku Mulbah told the court at the time of the investigation that juror Dweh’s statement that the state plan to bribe him was false and that he was trying to escape prosecution because bearing two names as a juror was suspicious and criminal in nature. At the end of the court’s investigation into the juror tempering case, the court ruled that it was not convinced from the evidence provided by juror Dweh that he was being tampered with. Juror Dweh was ordered jailed at the Monrovia Central Prison for one –month and all allowances forfeited when the then presiding Judge Yussif Kaba found him guilty of lying indicating that the act exhibited by the juror which was proven not to be true was criminal in nature. As the suspicion against the current prospective jurors continues to mount in the much publicized trial the court under the gavel of Judge Emery Paye Monday issued a citation to the various municipalities around Monrovia to include, Gardnersville, Paynesville, New Kru Town among others to send in additional jurors to continue the process of juror selection on Wednesday (today). Commenting on the present stalemate in the juror selection process defense lawyer Cllr. Tiawan Gongloe told FrontPage Africa that the juror selection process is one of the crucial stages in the trial, therefore one gets to be very careful or else the wrong person will be selected. “How can you employ a cook that you may suspect of cooking you a poison when you know exactly what poison does? Cllr. Gongloe wondered. Court records indicated that the 18 defendants on trial for mercenarism some were arrested in 2011 while others in 2012 for their involvement in the cross border attack between the border of Liberia with Ivory Coast in the South East that left seven peace keepers from Niger Killed, the claim they have all denied. At the time of their first trial in May of 2013 the case was adjourned just close to its logical conclusion due to juror tempering but later resumed in late December but cut –off by the presiding Judge at the time Yussif Kaba over security concern when the defendants staged a demonstration in the courtroom after they alleged that a lawmaker from Grand Gedeh (name not disclosed) had told them that they could be freed at time they re-appear on that date in court was not true.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 18:22:56 +0000
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