PATRICK POWELL GUN TRIAL Powell begs for mercy, denies refusing to turn over gun

THREE TIMES yesterday, businessman Patrick Powell insisted that he did not refuse a request by police investigators in 2007 to hand over his licensed Glock pistol and ammunition for inspection.

Instead, Powell said that when the request was made of him by Superintendent Clive Walker, he chose to invoke his right to remain silent.

Powell is on trial for allegedly failing to turn over his licensed firearm to police investigators in breach of the Firearms Act.

He was arrested and charged amid a probe into the shooting death of Kingston College student Khajeel Mais in July 2011.

Powell’s first public comments about the case came as he gave an unsworn statement in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court.

Near the end of his statement, the businessman asked Parish Court Judge Vaughn Smith, who is presiding over the trial, to have mercy on him.

“This is your courtroom. You are God in here. May you have mercy,” he said before taking a seat in the prisoner’s dock.

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT

Mais’s father was in court as Powell insisted that he never refused Walker’s request to turn over his weapon.

He told the court that he was in the custody of the police, who were investigating him for a murder, when Walker asked him for a gun.

The businessman said that he told Walker that he did not want to speak to him without his attorney present.

“Knowing that this matter was under investigation, I exercised my constitutional right to remain silent,” he testified.

“All I did was to insist that whenever I was being questioned by the police, that my lawyer was present.”

Powell told the court that he was overseas when he was informed by family members that he was the main suspect in Mais’s death and that a police raid was in progress at his upper St Andrew home.

He said that he agreed to return to Jamaica and was taken into custody on his arrival at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston.