Not Guilty for murder and manslaughter

Harrison Smith

A jury of seven women and five men went into deliberation ten minutes after midday to decide the fate of twenty-nine year old Harrison Smith, who is charged with the 2007 murder of Lionel Welcome. Four hours passed before the jurors emerged with unanimous Not Guilty verdicts for both murder and the alternative manslaughter charge. Welcome earned a living washing cars in downtown Belize City and that’s also where he met his death. He was stabbed once on the chest at around two a.m. on December twelfth, 2007. The main witness, Lyndon Sutherland, who worked as a security guard for two hot dog vendors, testified that he saw a man riding towards Albert Street and shortly after, he saw Welcome yelling for help while collapsing near Hofius store. The testimonies of three police officers were considered circumstantial evidence since none of them witnessed the incident. Justice Adolph Lucas also noted that there were inconsistencies in the testimonies because while Sutherland claimed Welcome’s last words were that a young man just stabbed him, the officers said he called Smith’s name. Smith was previously tried in 2009 for Welcome’s murder, but on July fifteenth, the jury was discharged and a retrial was ordered after Sutherland said in court that he knew the accused from prison. At the end of that trial Judge Lucas ruled that the statement was prejudicial to the case.