Teen’s account of shooting ‘implausible’ says crown

(CNS): The director of public prosecutions has invited a judge to reject the account given by defendant Jordon Manderson (18) of the night Marcus Duran was killed and find him guilty of murder. Wrapping up her case on  Wednesday against the teen who stands accused of killing the numbers man in March last year, Cheryl Richards QC told Justice Charles Quin that Manderson's evidence was “implausible” and “plainly untruthful”. With no eye witnesses, the crown has based its case on circumstantial and forensic evidence but she said that it had demonstrated that Manderson was at the scene, that he had the opportunity, was motivated by financial gain as part of a joint enterprise to rob the victim and had lied to the police to cover up his guilt.

Manderson is accused of shooting Duran at Maliwinas Way in West Bay during what the prosecution say was a robbery gone wrong that was masterminded by Raziel Jeffers. The crown’s case is that Jeffers knew that several numbers men were frequent visitors to the apartment outside of which Duran was shot, and had planned the crime with Manderson and Craig Johnson as the getaway driver. The three men were linked by phone records and all in the area at the time of the shooting, which Richards said was not a chance event but an orchestrated and precisely timed crime.

Richards told thejudge that Manderson’s account from the witness stand of how he was shot by Andy Barnes or possibly Damion Ming does not fit the forensic evidence and was improbable. The teen defendant claimed to be on the stairs, having run into the lighted area and crouched down, when he said the two gunmen ran towards him. She said his explanations “strained credibility” and did not make sense but were attempts to cover his guilty conduct.

“No person running from a gunman runs into the light and crouches down in full view of that gunman,” the DPP argued in her closing speech. “It is an instinctive reaction to run out of the way.” The bullet which is believed to be the one that hit Manderson during the night’s events was found, not on the stairs or the ground, but up the stairs on the balcony close to the body of the victim. She dismissed the possibility of contamination of the scene, saying that it would be impossible to believe that it was the only piece of evidence that was moved.

A hat which contained both the DNA of Manderson and the deceased was also found at the top of the stairs, pointing to the teen’s presence on the balcony, where during the trial the teen said he had never been.

She pointed to the many lies that Manderson had told the police, starting with his first claim that he had been shot at Birch Tree Hill by Andy Barnes, which he later retracted when his DNA was found at the scene. Richards described this as more than a transfer of what happened at Maliwinas Way to a different location but a complete concoction. The crown counsel also said that Manderson had insisted he had been picked up by a man in a grey van that he didn’t know but was later forced to admit it was Chris Johnson in a white car when again his blood was found in that vehicle.

She also said that phone records and witnesses all place Barnes well away from Maliwinas Way that night. By contrast, however, Manderson, Johnson and Jeffers were, according to phone records, all in the same cell site area at the time of the crime. Furthermore, Richards pointed to evidence given to the court that Jeffers had been the one to suggest blaming the "Logswood Boys", meaning Barnes and Ming, among others.

Richards said that Manderson had also told the police that he had heard Duran had been robbed of some $9,000 — a very specific figure that the police never had in evidence but which she said indicated further specific knowledge of the crime. She said the accused teen was “clearly deceptive” and guilty of the crime, which was a triangular joint enterprise with Jeffers at the top of the triangle as the one who orchestrated the plan to rob Duran.   

David Fisher QC, defence counsel for Manderson, will begin his submissions to the judge Thursday morning before Justice Quin retires to consider his verdict on the murder charge.