Three men accused of abducting and killing senior Customs official Nigel Christian will have their fates decided by a jury beginning Monday, after four closing arguments laid out sharply conflicting versions of events in the High Court on Wednesday.
According to Antigua.news, Lasean Bully of Cashew Hill, Wayne Thomas of Hatton, and Saleim Harrigan of Greenbay are charged with kidnapping Christian at gunpoint from his McKinnons home and shooting him dead on a dirt road in Thibou's on July 10, 2020. All three have pleaded not guilty.
Director of Public Prosecutions Clement Joseph told the jury the case was straightforward. A man was unlawfully and intentionally killed, he argued, and DNA evidence, cellular mapping data, and testimony from a key witness who drove the accused that day pointed directly at the three defendants. Joseph defended that witness against credibility attacks mounted by the defence, acknowledged the driver's own admitted role in transporting the men, and rejected claims that police had planted evidence. "Antigua police is the slackest police on this earth if they are going to plant evidence and not fill it up with DNA," he said. He dismissed what he characterised as a stream of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories from the defence with three words: "Agriculture. Agriculture. Agriculture."
All three defence attorneys converged on a common argument — that the key witness was a liar who had traded the freedom of three innocent men to secure his own — but each targeted different weaknesses in the prosecution's case.
Wendel Alexander, counsel for Harrigan, urged the jury to consider who truly had a motive to kill Christian, a customs officer who had been investigating fraud at the time of his death. He catalogued what he described as suspicious circumstances surrounding the driver, questioned the reliability of the cell tower evidence, and labelled the overall investigation a "dry bones investigation."
Michael Archibald, counsel for Bully, framed the prosecution's case as a puzzle with critical pieces missing — no DNA from Christian on a bag attributed to him, no forensic trace of the accused in the vehicles they allegedly travelled in, and no adequate explanation for why police, who he claimed had advance knowledge of a plot against Christian, took no steps to protect him. "The story is the box and the evidence is the pieces of the puzzle — pieces are missing," he told the jury.
Sherfield Bowen, counsel for Thomas, delivered the most forceful address, describing key evidence as "a lie from the chambers of hell" and suggesting the investigation had been deliberately steered away from the truth. He questioned the circumstances under which evidence from Perry Bay entered the case, noted that a senior officer who had questioned the driver as a suspect was subsequently removed from the investigation, and pointed out that a well-known businessman named as having ordered the killing was never charged. "They don't want the truth," he told the jury. He closed with a pointed question: "When the protector becomes a predator, from whence are we going to be protected?"
Justice Rajiv Persaud will deliver his summation before the jury retires to begin deliberations on Monday.
