Court outlines reasons for turning down killer teacher’s appeal
THE court last week outlined its reasons for turning down the 2019 appeal of teacher Chadwick Blissett, who was sentenced to life behind bars for the murder of former quantity surveyor and Jamaica Combined Cadet Force Major Cletus Graham in 2012.
Graham’s decomposing, nude body was discovered wrapped in a sheet, under a bed in his Vineyard Town, Kingston apartment on May 17, 2012, after he was last seen alive three days earlier driving his Mitsubishi motor vehicle. He had multiple stab wounds and his throat had been slashed.
Blissett was convicted for the offence of murder in the Home Circuit Court in March 2015, and sentenced on June 19, 2015 to life imprisonment, with the stipulation that he serve 15 years before becoming eligible for parole.
After an application to appeal the conviction and sentence was denied by a single judge in 2018, Blissett made a renewed attempt in 2019, at which time the court ordered that “the application for leave to appeal is refused; the conviction and sentence are affirmed and the sentence is to be reckoned as having commenced on the date of 19 June 2015”.
At the time, the court indicated that it would provide written reasons for its decision.
In its written judgement handed down last week Wednesday, the court said there was no dispute that Graham and Blissett knew each other and that the latter would, from time to time, visit Graham at his apartment.
The Crown’s case, built on circumstantial evidence, included an admission by Blissett that he was in the company of Graham on the evening of May 14, 2012, and stayed at Graham’s apartment for two hours.
Graham’s vehicle was involved in a crash in Old Harbour on May 15, and was being driven by Blissett who, at the time, told police that his name was David Chambers.
Blissett, on the morning of the accident, had scratches to his face and neck.
Additionally, a laptop bag belonging to Graham was found at Blissett’s home. He was also found in possession of a phone owned by Graham, while Graham’s car was found on Jobs Lane in Spanish Town, St Catherine — the same road on which Blissett lived. Furthermore, the deoxyribonucleic (DNA) profile identified in the applicant’s buccal swab was similar to the DNA profile identified in a sample taken from a drop of blood found in Graham’s apartment. Evidence was also led at the trial to say that the applicant could not be excluded as the source of blood that was found at Graham’s apartment. The evidence was that the probability of someone other than the applicant having those identifying DNA profile was “one in many million”.
Blissett, however, denied being in Old Harbour on the morning of May 15, 2012, or ever driving Graham’s car. He also denied having been involved in a motor vehicle crash at any time, or, as a police witness testified, ever having had fresh scratches, scrapes or cuts on his face.
In relation to the phone taken from him, which the Crown contended belonged to Graham, the applicant denied that it did, asserting that it had been a gift to him in 2011 from his aunt who had visited the island from England where she resides.
He said that he had nothing to hide, that is why he consented to a buccal swab for analysis and unlocked all telephones and electronic devices that the police took from him. He also said: “I did not kill Cletus Graham; he was my friend.”
In the appeal filed on behalf of Blissett, his lawyer argued that the verdict of the jury should be set aside on the grounds that it was unreasonable or cannot be supported by the evidence; the learned trial judge erred in failing to provide any sufficient direction to the jury
on the inherent limitations of a partial DNA profile in respect to the blood drop on the living room floor; and the learned trial judge also erred in permitting the prosecution to adduce into evidence exceptionally high numerical expression of statistical probability of a random match, thereby depriving the applicant of a fair trial.
However, in outlining why the application had failed on all three grounds, the Appeal Court last Wednesday gave several instances where the judge had outlined to the jury the potential weaknesses of the Crown’s case and cautioned them in this respect. Furthermore, it said there were several strands of circumstantial evidence on which the Crown relied, which together formed a sufficient basis on which the jury could have arrived at a guilty verdict, making it so that the applicant also failed on this ground.
Stating the quantities as “one in several million”, as the learned trial judge did several times in the summation, could possibly have redounded to the applicant’s benefit.
“Looking at the summation in its entirety, therefore, we took the view that it was fair and balanced overall, and, as a result, that the conviction ought not to have been disturbed,” the judges concluded.
The matter was heard on December 17 and 20 last year, and on December 2, 2020.
Graham was a special advisor and past president of the Kiwanis Club of Liguanea in St Andrew, and also past president of the Jamaican Institute of Quantity Surveyors where he had worked as a partner and director.