Accused murderer remanded, lawyer to challenge bail rule

Two brothers, one charged with murder and the other accused of abusing his teenage stepson in a separate case, were both remanded to Her Majesty’s Prison yesterday.
Kasroy Kashandy Simon, a police constable, is accused of murdering Jamaican visitor Nicoma McFarlene on the night of February 7 by strangling her in her mother’s home at Freeman’s Village. His brother is Karim Christian who is featured in a video beating a child with a slat of plywood last month.
Magistrate Ngaio Emanuel-Edwards set June 5 as the date for Simon’s committal which is when he should expect to hear whether there is enough evidence for his case to be sent to the High Court for trial.
The accused could not get bail from the magistrate since Section 62 (3) (b) of the Magistrates Code of Procedure (Amendment) Act 2004 prohibits a magistrate from granting bail to anyone accused of murder.
However, he has the option of applying for bail in the High Court. In the interim, his lawyer, O’Neil Simpson, told the court he intends to file a motion challenging that law because he believes it to be unconstitutional.
Simon, of Bendals, was already on suspension from the police force for unrelated matters when he was arrested and subsequently charged for the killing.
He was taken into custody on Tuesday after the autopsy showed that the 25-year-old woman had not committed suicide as the scene had been allegedly staged to suggest.
When her mother Patricia Kenyon found her, McFarlene was slumped in a chair and her left wrist slashed in two places. An empty Clorox bottle was on the nearby dining table, and a razor was also found in the area.
Kenyon was immediately suspicious because only a few drops of blood were near the body and a few stains/smears were around the house.
When these observations were pointed out tothe police, the woman said the investigators were still not convinced that she was right in her conclusion that someone had killed her daughter who had only recently travelled to Antigua to help her (the mother) prepare for surgery, which was scheduled for February 27th.
The medical procedure has since been postponed indefinitely as the mother turns her attention to planning a funeral and raising the money to do so – as Nicoma McFarlene’s body is to be returned to her native Jamaica for burial.