One freed of murder; one convicted of manslaughter
Today Marlon Contreras is celebrating his twenty-first birthday but when he appeared in the Supreme Court, his gift was a guilty verdict for Manslaughter. Contreras was charged along with Abraham Guerra for the stabbing death of forty year old taxi driver, Jose Howe which occurred on September twenty-eighth, 2007 in Benque Viejo Town. Both men gave caution statements confessing to the murder, but on Monday, Guerra’s attorney entered a no case submission, which was upheld by Justice Troadio Gonzalez. That ruling came after a voir dire in which the only evidence against Guerra, his caution statement, was not admitted into evidence and he was acquitted of the charge. As for Contreras, a jury of twelve deliberated for over two hours before unanimously finding him not guilty of murder, but guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. The day after his murder, Howe was found inside his taxi with multiple stab wounds to the body. Police also found two seven inch knives in the back seat of the vehicle. Sentencing has been deferred until later this month in the Belmopan Supreme Court.
Confess to murder & walk free. Only in Belize!
START CONVICTING AND HANGING THESE MURDERERS….MANSLAUGHTER MY …BELIZE NEED TO GET ALL THESE MURDERS PUT THEM IN FRONT OF A DEATH SQUAD, AND GET RID OF THESE COCKSUCKERS…..THEY ARE PARASITES TO THIS NATION. I APOLOGIZE FOR MY LANGUAGE BUT AM REALLY PISSED READING THE NEWS. IT’S HEART RENCHING.
I really don’t know what the F is wrong with these magistrates in Belize.
lol… we should look at all before coming to conclusion… if the confession is not valid for one then what is good for one is good for all… our system is weak …. we need to look at the system… weak weak weak…. gota get harworking police, crime investigators and i could go on….
It’s not even about the Police the Policemen out there are like messangers at the end of the day these guys are only taking orders from their commanding officer.
I think that the government need to bring in professional investigators from abroad…because this is way out of control..and it will just get worst…the people that investigate crime in Belize don’t have the knowledge to find the tiny little details in a crime. I wonder..did the police officers that investigate crime, did they go for special training, did they go to forensics school, or did they do a course in crime investigation…because i know you need to have special training in these fields.
I am not mad at the Chinese community.Maybe we should learn from this situation and come together to protest every murder of a Belizean Citizen regardless of ethnicity.
Nina:Professional investigators with a 7% conviction rate isn’t going to make a difference.If the conviction rate would increase i do believe the crime rate would decrease because that would probably be a form of deterance for the other criminals.
wow 2 knives but only one killer. how can that add up? please anyone can get away with murder.
Probably contreras is affilated with erwin contreras . I knew the guy who was murdered. I came to know him personally. You know a few days ago tzac was given bail of 3500for a misdeanour .these murder was set free. Isnt this stupid. Why didnt those crimminals on payroll (c o p) did fingerprint. Stupidness,including their superior. God please give some intelligence to those stupids. Including the magistrates.