The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

EXPRESSING concern in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court last week about a death threat allegedly made against her by a man charged with murder, a senior prosecutor in the Office of the Attorney General is urging a Supreme Court justice to deny bail to the applicant who is awaiting the start of his next murder trial.

Darnell Dorsette recently prosecuted Tony Smith, aka Jamal Penn, in relation to the murder of Tristan Bartlette on February 8, 2012. However, Smith, the alleged leader of the Border Boys gang, was acquitted of the charge last week by a jury.

Ms Dorsette claimed in an affidavit filed on Friday that during the trial, she was informed by a police orderly of a threat Mr Smith had made against her life.

“Specifically on Friday, August 29, 2014,” she said in her affidavit, “at around the luncheon period, I had just returned to the precincts of Senior Justice Jon Isaacs’ court when a senior attorney who was sitting in the court conversing with a police orderly attached to Senior Justice Jon Isaacs’ court told me that the police orderly had something very important to tell me.

“The police orderly told me the following in the presence of the senior attorney: ‘Miss Dorsette, be careful. When I was taking the defendants, Tony Smith and Leroy Smith, from the Central Police Station and bringing them to Justice Isaacs’ court during Case Management Hearings, I overheard them telling each other: ‘That Miss Dorsette. We ga get her.’”

Ms Dorsett said that although she did not inform the Justice about the threat because she did not want to prejudice the case, she wrote about her concerns to authorities in the Attorney General’s office on August 29, 2014.

She said that “family members and close associates of Tony Smith and other unknown persons” have been closely observing her movements in Bank Lane, near the court where the case was tried.

Adding that Smith will soon apply for bail as he awaits the start of his next trial, she said: “There is no condition of bail that will prevent Tony Smith and/or his associates from interfering with me or those associated with me if he is granted bail pending another murder trial against him before Justice Bernard Turner’s court on the 19th January, 2015.”

She said that during the recent murder trial against Smith, numerous witnesses were threatened with death, including the mother and brother of the deceased – Paulette Dean and Prince Young.  

“In fact,” she wrote, “Senior Justice Jon Isaacs had to issue a Warrant of Arrest for Prince Young in order to get him before the court to give his evidence against Tony Smith that he overheard Tony Smith ‘bragging to some fellas on Hay Street that he killed Poggs and not Shaddy.’

“Poggs was another name the deceased, Tristan Bartlette, was known by in the Hay Street area. Tristan Bartlette or ‘Poggs’ is the second cousin of Tony Smith. Another brother of the deceased, Mario Sawyer, failed to come forward as well as we were reliably informed that he had also been threatened with death.”

She added that another prosecution witness, Oreio Percentie, was found dead on the airport road in North Eleuthera in what was ruled a traffic fatality.

She wrote that Prince Young swore on an affidavit that he was stopped while he was walking on Lewis Street around 8pm on August 15 when a $20,000 “hit was out on his head because he was a key prosecution witness against” Smith.

She wrote: “In all the circumstances of this case, the applicant, Tony Smith … is not a good candidate for the grant of bail pending his murder trial before Justice Bernard Turner.”