Appeal court says it granted bail to man accused of murder after 'substantive unfairness' in Supreme Court ruling

The Court of Appeal overturned a Supreme Court ruling denying bail to man accused of murder because prosecutors relied on “bare, unsubstantiated hearsay” about alleged witness interference, and the judge’s failure to properly consider several factors. 

According to President Marva McDonald-Bishop, this amounted to "substantive unfairness" to Kevonne Reid, who is charged in the killing of a woman in November 2019

“While the learned judge was entitled to consider the risk of interference with witnesses and the possibility of obstruction of justice, the weight attached to bare, unsubstantiated hearsay, in the absence of direct evidence which ought reasonably to have been available and which the court had directed should be obtained, was, with respect, misplaced,” McDonald-Bishop explained in a 40-page opinion released on Monday. 

McDonald-Bishop overturned the decision of Supreme Court judge Vinette Graham-Allen and granted bail to Reid. The decision was announced on February 11 after oral arguments concluded, with written reasons to follow. 

She said Graham-Allen "failed to accord sufficient weight to matters plainly material to the evaluative, honest, and rational judgment the law required, especially in the context of an application for readmission to bail."

Reid, who is also charged with illegal possession of firearm, was represented by attorney John Clarke. 

The prosecution alleges that Reid shot and killed the woman in the presence of her minor children. The main prosecution witness, a child identified by the pseudonym 'Damian Reid,' claimed to have seen a man he called "Teardrops" commit the act and later identified Reid at an identification parade conducted in July 2020.

Reid had been granted bail in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court in November 2020, with reporting, curfew, and travel document conditions. 

His bail was subsequently varied to reduce his reporting frequency from five days per week to three. 

He appeared before the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston from December 2021 and remained on bail, in full compliance with the requirements, until July 2023, when the court revoked it after learning he had been charged with separate Gun Court offences. 

Those charges were ultimately disposed of by a formal order of no evidence, resulting in his acquittal.

Following that acquittal, Reid applied for readmission to bail. 

The prosecution objected raising, among several grounds, an allegation that he had "strategically contacted" a witness via WhatsApp, causing a breakdown in communication with that witness.

The court noted that that allegation appeared in Crown's written submissions and was attributed to information from the investigating officer. 

However, the appeal court pointed out that no statement from the officer was produced; no WhatsApp messages were exhibited and no particulars were given as to the date of contact, the content of any messages, or the phone number involved.

Justice Graham-Allen refused to readmit Reid to bail on December 8, 2025, citing, among other things, the risk of witness interference and her view that Reid presented a flight risk. She pointed partly to the circumstances of his arrest in August 2020, when he was allegedly seen riding a motorcycle before being stopped by police.

However, the Court of Appeal President found Graham-Allen's reliance on the witness interference allegation, without sufficient evidence to support the claim, to be legally wrong, adding that the prosecution's material was, in the words of Reid's attorney, "double hearsay". 

"The crown's assertion in its written submissions concerning the alleged witness interference did not meet this standard," McDonald-Bishop wrote, explaining that a court in refusing bail must be satisfied that "there was indeed a violation of the statutory requirements for the grant of bail or a breach of the bail condition". 

McDonald-Bishop concluded that, "There was no information before the court to confirm that contact was made by the appellant with the witness, the date of that contact, the contents of any messages that were sent, or the phone number which would have been attributed to the appellant from which the messages emanated."

According to the appellate judge, "the quality of the material was insufficient to establish any fact of interference with witnesses, any likelihood of such interference, or any genuine risk of obstruction of justice. There was, regrettably, substantive unfairness". 

She added: "....I was compelled to conclude that the learned judge’s reliance on the crown’s unsubstantiated assertions by way of submissions was erroneous."

"The learned judge was required not merely to receive the allegation, but to confront the implications of its evidential quality and weakness before treating it as a sufficient basis for refusing bail."

Justice McDonald-Bishop, drawing on authorities from England, Ireland, and the Bahamas, set out twelve principles governing the use of hearsay in bail proceedings, a framework she noted appeared absent from existing Jamaican appellate jurisprudence. 

Among the core principles: courts may receive hearsay in bail hearings, but judges must be slow to attach significant weight to it where first-hand evidence could readily have been obtained but was not. A bare assertion, she found, sits at the lowest end of the evidentiary spectrum and carries little or no probative weight.

On the question of flight risk, McDonald-Bishop found that the judge gave "determinative weight" to Reid's 2020 apprehension while failing to meaningfully engage with his consistent, unbroken bail compliance over nearly three years, a record that included regular reporting to police and no failure to surrender to custody. 

McDonald-Bishop said the Supreme Court judge failed to consider whether reinforced bail conditions could have managed any perceived risk short of continued detention.

"The constitutional inquiry is not at an end once a risk is identified under the Act," she wrote. "The court must go further and determine whether the perceived risk can be sufficiently controlled by conditions short of remand."

Bail was granted on February 11 in the sum of $850,000, with Reid required to report to the Mountain View Police Station three times weekly, a nightly curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.  surrender of travel documents, a stop order, and a prohibition on contacting prosecution witnesses.

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