Two cousins, Derek Parham and Francis Parham charged with the attempted murder of Jermaine Jones who was stabbed Sixty Eight times were acquitted of the charge by a jury of nine today in the court of Justice Troadio Gonzalez. Senior Crown Counsel Yohhahnseh Cave threw in the towel after Jones, the victim and chief witness, took the witness stand and said he didn’t know who stabbed him. Cave applied to have Jones treated as a hostile witness.
He told Jones that he had made a statement to the police that it was Derek and Francis Parham. But Jones denied what he’d sworn to in the statement. After Cave closed his case, Justice Gonzalez directed the jury to return a formal verdict of not guilty. But although they were acquitted, Derek and Francis Parham were not freed. Derek and another person, Kenrick Francis, are on remand pending a charge for murder and Francis has other charges for which trial is pending.
Derek and Francis Parham were not represented by an attorney. The incident occurred between midnight and 1 am on July 15th, 2007 on Currasow Street. In a statement he gave to the police, Jones said he was at a party on Currasow Street at Parham’s house and went with Derek and Francis to buy weed at an abandoned house. Jones said he was stabbed when he returned downstairs after having gotten no response from his knock on the door upstairs.
