The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON Tribune Staff Reporter ljohnson@tribunemedia.net MURDER convict Maxo Tido dismissed his attorney Roger Gomez II during his resentencing in Supreme Court yesterday morning. The remand prisoner said his decision to relieve the attorney of his duties came as a result of Mr Gomez having visited him only once since the matter was adjourned on Friday, February 10. Tido told Senior Justice Jon Isaacs he was upset with the attorney's lack of interest in the case. On February 10, Mr Gomez appeared before Senior Justice Isaacs and informed the court he did not have the trial transcripts and would need them to prepare submissions on sentencing. Jerone Roberts, another attorney who is following the case, offered to give him the documents. However, Mr Gomez said yesterday he never got the transcripts and so was not in a position to move the matter forward. Tido, who was sentenced to die in 2006, saw this decision overturned by the London-based Privy Council in June of 2011. On March 20, 2006, a jury convicted Tido of murdering 16-year-old Donnell Conover in 2002. Her body was found off Cowpen Road battered and bruised, her skull crushed. Evidence also revealed that parts of Ms Conover's body were burned after her death. A month after his conviction, then Senior Justice Anita Allen (now Court of Appeal President) ruled that the crime committed by Tido warranted the death penalty. The decision came days after the Privy Council ruled that the mandatory death sentence in place up until that point in the Bahamas was not constitutional. In 2009, the Committee for the Prerogative of Mercy decided the law should take it's course, as Tido's case was not one that warranted mercy. However, Tido appealed to the Privy Council, the highest court of appeal recognised in the Bahamas, which ruled that the killing of Conover did not warrant execution. Senior Justice Isaacs adjourned the matter March 13.