COLLINS ALIAS DERBY
V.
THE REPUBLIC
·
FRANCOIS J.S.C.
In the early hours of the morning of 28 June 1984 a young woman left her house to take breakfast to her father in his farm. She got there only to discover her father’s battered body in a stream under a bridge that divided his two farms. In attempting to drag her father out of the water, she discovered he had sustained extensive injuries. Blood was oozing from his mouth and the side of his neck. His teeth had been knocked out. Her father was fully clothed with his faming boots on. Nearby was a cutlass, and by it a spear, a truncheon, a sack of corn and a strange pair of brown sandals. She recognised the sack and cutlass as belonging to her father, but not the other items.
The autopsy on the deceased disclosed a fracture of the skull which a blow to the head could have caused. Wounds on the forehead and the back of the head were lacerations caused by a metal implement. The lacerations to both back and front of the head ruled out accident and forcibly suggested the inflict…