Suspect in decapitation found not guilty of Manslaughter

The case of a man who was charged for a home invasion and decapitation in Lords Bank ended today. The trial of twenty year old Robert Gillett, charged with manslaughter and burglary for the decapitation of twenty year old Mara Naomi Garcia on June tenth, 2005 ended today. The jury of seven women and two men deliberated for about three hours before it arrived at a unanimous verdict. Gillett was found not guilty of the manslaughter charge but was found guilty of burglary.
Justice Adolph Lucas has deferred sentencing until February eighteenth, in order to give Gillett’s attorney, Anthony Sylvestre, time to prepare a plea for mitigation. The prosecution, represented by Crown Counsel Trinia Young, sought to prove that Gillett and another man who decapitated Garcia with a Samurai sword at the house of Floyd Brown, were partners in crime and that Gillett knew what the other man planned to do. Gillett had given a caution statement to the police in which he admitted that he and the other man went to Brown’s house to burglarize it and that he tried to discourage the other man from killing Garcia, who was working as a house keeper and was alone in the house when they went inside.

The prosecution’s case relied mostly on the statement Gillett gave which was admitted as evidence. Gillett, in his own defense, gave a statement from the dock in which he claimed that he gave the caution statement under duress and that sergeant Egbert Castillo told him what to say. Gillett had pleaded guilty to Manslaughter when the case was first brought to court in April last year. But he changed his plea to not guilty when he appeared in court for sentencing. His brother, John Cassanova, who was also charged with the murder of Garcia, was acquitted and freed in April last year.