Judge Directs Formal Not-Guilty Verdict after Successful Defence Submissions in $20,000 Bank Account Theft Case
December 13, 2024
The case of a man accused of stealing over $20,000 from a bank account concluded with a not-guilty verdict after successful submissions by the defence counsel. Key points include lack of evidence and unreliable transactions.
After successful submissions by defence counsel for a man accused of stealing more than $20 000 from a bank account, the case ended with the judge directing the jury to return a formal not-guilty verdict.
Originally, Romero Alexander Gaskin was accused of stealing $20 765.66 belonging to Jo-Anne Johnson and Kenneth Campbell from their bank account at the Sheraton branch of the former CIBC First- Caribbean International Bank between October 1 and 15, 2018.
The former accused, 34, of Palm Court, Wanstead Gardens, St Michael, denied the charge in Supreme Court 3A before Justice Anthony Blackman. During the trial, he was represented by attorneys Amoy Gilding-Bourne and Errol Gaskin, while Principal State Counsel Rudolph Burnett and State Counsel Treann Knight prosecuted for the State.
Among the grounds of the recent no-case submissions on Romero Gaskin’s behalf were that the State had produced no evidence which proved Gaskin had committed the crime, it had not proven the essential elements of theft, the evidence was not reliable enough for a jury to convict, and the person who transferred the funds from the joint account into several local accounts (one of which was owned by Gaskin’s friend Shem Chapman) was never identified and those transactions had originated outside of Barbados. (SD)
