Accused claims police beat, threatened him into murder confession

A murder accused told a jury that he confessed to killing a man because police beat him and threatened his parents.

Romel Hose Marville, a resident of Hawkins Gap, Westbury Road, St Michael, gave that testimony on the witness stand in the No. 3 Supreme Court on Tuesday after the State closed its case against him,

He has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 26-year-old Donasan Husbands, also known as King of Cheesecake, who was shot shortly after disembarking the MV Dreamchaser on July 13, 2018.

Marville testified that he was asleep in his mother’s bed when police entered the house and woke him. He was taken to a police station, where officers told him they were investigating a shooting incident in which one man was killed and another injured. He was placed in a holding cell, where he claimed he was slapped, suffocated, and shocked by officers.

The accused described an incident where he was taken into a room, ordered to strip naked, wrapped in “grease wrap” from his ankles to his throat, and forced onto the ground. A plastic bag was placed over his head, and an officer covered his nose and mouth with his hand, demanding to know “where the gun is”, he told the court.

“I kept telling them I don’t know nothing about no gun. I don’t deal with guns. I don’t know nothing so,” Marville testified, explaining that the officer’s actions continued until he vomited. After being unbound and allowed to clean up, Marville returned to the room where he was made to stand on newspaper while the same officer shocked his feet with wire.

Marville recalled being slapped on the head and later waking up in the back of an ambulance. He found out he had suffered a seizure, a condition that has affected him since childhood.

After the officer accompanying him said the accused did not look like anything was wrong with him, Marville signed papers after telling a nurse that he was fine.

He also recalled being coached by police in an interview room about what to say during the recording, including naming a man called Drill.

“I said I do not know anything about this so I cannot say so, and he ask me ‘how old your mother is? You see your mother hopping coming down hey to the station for you? You want me tek up you mudda and fadda? You feel you mudda could come and sleep pun that slab wid she old bones?’ So I start to cry and say ‘no’. De officer said ‘you gine go in there and say what we tell you to say. Say that Drill was who tell you that the boat gine be there and the body that shoot through you house, and that he tell you wuh part de gun is’,” the accused testified. “I start to cry and he ask ‘You want me go for you mudda?’”

Marville said he eventually complied with the officers’ demands and made the confession, as he was “studying” his parents.

During his nearly three-hour-long testimony, Marville told the jury that on the night of the murder, he had been at a friend’s house. He claimed there were cameras at the house and suggested they be checked, but no one wrote that information down. He said he and his friend played Call of Duty online until around 3 a.m. the following day, then he returned home, which was only a few houses away.

Marville also mentioned that while he was at the police station, a witness came forward and told police that he was not the shooter and identified another man.

Principal State Counsel Neville Watson, who is prosecuting the case, will cross-examine Marville on Wednesday. 

The accused is represented by attorney-at-law Safiya Moore.

Justice Carlisle Greaves is presiding over the case.