Attorney says case may be difficult to prove
While the merits or demerits of the police case against Eluterio Vasquez and Alfonso Teul continue to be played out in the court of public opinion, the real test of the evidence against the accused will come at their Supreme Court trial. While that may take upwards of a year to happen, today we sought legal opinion on several key points governing alibis and witness identification. The police are on record as saying that they have sufficient evidence to place Teul and Vasquez at the scene of the hold-up on May second near Roaring River, while there are no less than a dozen witnesses who have come forward, and are prepared to go to court and testify that the men were picking oranges on a farm in the Stann Creek Valley while the robbery and murder were taking place. Attorney Kirk Anderson told News Five’s Patrick Jones that the burden of proof rests squarely on the shoulders of the police.
Kirk Anderson, Attorney
“If these witnesses are called only by the defense as may well occur at the same time, then it will be a matter for the jury to decide where the truth lies and who they should believe and who they should not but bearing in mind at all time that it is not for the defendant to prove that he was at the farm picking oranges. It is for the prosecution to prove that he was at the scene of the crime.”
Q: “What evidence would the police need to put forward, in your opinion, to get a conviction?”
Kirk Anderson
“Well, it’s not so much a matter of necessarily putting forward a lot of witnesses. That’s important to understand. If there are two witnesses who can positively and conclusively identify the defendants at the scene and their identification can stand up to careful scrutiny then that is all that the prosecution needs. There exists a possibility if these witnesses saw the photos of the defendants in the photo album which was shown to them, there is a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood that they would have identified these same persons at the identification parade which followed subsequently. This does not mean that the identification parade, which followed subsequently, is bad or is a nullity. It means that I think it’s something that the jury will have to take into account.”
Q: “During the hold-up, we are told that all the gunmen, they wore masks, and now you have five people positively identifying them out of a photo album. How can you I.D. somebody? If you have on a mask, I can’t tell that it’s you when your mask is off.”
Kirk Anderson
“Well that’s certainly a good point and I have no doubt the defense will find it an even better point to use. Clearly if the robbers were wearing masks and the prosecution has statements in its possession from witnesses to the event or events of that day who will say that these persons were wearing masks it becomes difficulty if not impossible to see how it is that anyone could have positively identified them.
If the mask came off then there is a greater likelihood that that person who had that mask before can be properly and positively identified but again it all depend on the circumstance surrounding the identification in question: how long was it, in what sort of light, at what distance, had the person identifying ever seen this individual before, was there anything blocking his or her view. There are all of these factors to be considered.”
Alfonso Teul and Eluterio Vasquez were charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and robbery in the Belmopan Magistrate’s Court on Monday. No plea was taken from the men and they are now on remand at Hattieville Prison, awaiting their day in court.
