20 year-old Henry Cornejo, the man accused of the 2009 murder of 30 year-old Gilbert Hamilton Olivera, is free tonight after he was acquitted before Justice Adolph Lucas.
In May of 2009, Olivera was walking on Plues Street when he was shot in the back with a sawed-off shotgun. Olivera was believed to have been targeted because he was to testify as a crucial eyewitness in the trial of Kareem "Robbery" Lopez, who would end up being acquitted of the murder of Mark Gardiner.
In his trial, which started last week in the Supreme Court, the prosecution, represented by Crown Counsels Christophe Rodriguez and Stevanni Duncan, had 2 major hurdles.
The first was that a major piece of evidence against Cornejo was an oral confession statement, which he allegedly gave to police while in custody.
He allegedly said quote, "I shot the man. I was hiding in a yard, and when the man passed by, I ran out and shot him." End quote. In the end, Justice Lucas ruled that this confession could not be admitted against Cornejo because there was no strong evidence that he freely gave it without coercion by the police.
The prosecution then turned to the main witness to come to court to testify, but when he refused to show up, they tried to get his written statement to police admitted into evidence against Cornejo.
This morning, Justice Lucas refused to allow that statement admitted as evidence because he believed that the crown did not go to full lengths to try to locate this main witness.
When the prosecution closed their case, Cornejo's attorney, Anthony Sylvester, made a no-case submission to the court. Because there was no evidence against him, Justice Lucas was forced to direct the jury to return a not-guilty verdict. With that, Cornejo, who had been remanded since 2009, was able to walk out of court a free man. Cornejo jumped on a bicycle and rode off up stop, on Treasury Lane until he got onto Albert Street.
Our records show that 7News has spoken to Cornejo before. Back in 2009, he was only 17 when he became an inmate at the Wagner's Youth Facility at the Hattieville Prison - after all, he was on remand awaiting trial. The entire prison got a visit from Moses "Shyne" Levy, who gave them a speech about turning one's life around Here's what he told us then:
Henry Cornejo, Inmate - Wagner's Youth Facility
"He also said that people are the ones who change their own lives because no one can change it for you and I really think that is a good message and I could try to change my life as he did."
It is important to note that Cornejo graduated from his high school as the salutatorian, and it was only a few days after that shining moment that he was hauled in by police, as an alleged killer.
