Stabbing Murder Accused Acquitted over ID Problems

Wilhelm Gillett

Twenty-eight year old Wilhelm Gillette was today acquitted of the murder of twenty-one year old Norval Belisle, stabbed to death in the parking lot of La Cabana Club in the Las Flores area of Belmopan in 2015. Gillette was tried alone by Justice Antoinette Moore in April in Belmopan. In her ruling today, Justice Moore said she was not sure of Gillette’s guilt due to the quality of the identification given by the Crown’s two main witnesses. Both witnesses told the court during trial that that they saw when a young man whom they never knew until the night of the stabbing picked up a bottle, broke it, then approached Belisle and stabbed him once to the throat. The witnesses identified Gillette from the dock but no identification parade was done. Gillette, Belisle and the witnesses had been hanging out at another nightclub and the fight broke out while they were on the way to La Cabana. Justice Moore said she found that to a significant degree, the testimony of the two crown witnesses coincided.  They both agreed that the man wearing blue wave rag/cap was the one who did the stabbing.  They both identify him as the attacker that night and as the accused sitting in the dock as the same person. While she considered both witnesses honest and truthful, they witnessed the incident from different vantage points and with no formal identification done, the inconsistencies, however small, were enough to make their testimonies suspect and as a result reasonable doubt crept in, leading to the acquittal. Kileru Awich prosecuted the case and attorney Arthur Saldivar represented Gillette.