Guilty verdict for man accused of pouring acid on woman

St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. –ON Friday a V.I. Superior Court jury found Haiti native Lemy Vergile ‘Guilty’ of second-degree murder for the death of his former girlfriend, Paulette Joseph.

Vergile, 44, was arrested and charged with causing Joseph’s death when on January 28th, 2008, she was beaten about the head with a rock and had acid poured on her body.

The jury also convicted Vergile of second-degree assault relating to the acid attack, as well as several counts of using the rock as a deadly weapon. The jury failed to convict Vergile on the gun possession charge for the weapon found in his car.

Vergile had confessed to the gruesome crime after his arrest saying that the acid used belonged to the deceased and that he had not killed the woman intentionally. He also reportedly admitted at the time to bashing the victim’s head in with the rock.

During the trial however, Vergile testified that it was Joseph who wielded and fired a gun at him and attempted to sear him with caustic acid. He said he had retaliated in self defense and claimed Joseph hit her head on a rock after he pushed her.

Assistant Attorney Generals Jesse Bethel and Judy Gomez countered Vergile’s self defense argument saying that evidence documenting the atrocious and fatal injuries suffered by the woman made it clear her attacker had murderous intentions. ~~Adz:Right~~

According to the particulars of the case, on the day in question Emergency Dispatchers had received reports about shots fired in the area of Green Cay Plantation followed shortly by reports of a woman screaming. Two persons who had made the calls provided police with a description of a car they saw leaving the scene where a motionless body lay. The persons also followed the car to a Sugar Estate apartment and notified police to the suspect’s whereabouts.

Joseph, who was alive when whisked away by EMS, perished from her injuries the same night and her death was attributed to blunt force trauma to the head.

V.I. Superior Court Judge James Carroll III now has the difficult task of sentencing Vergile since he was found not guilty of first-degree murder but was convicted of one count of felony murder. Under the territory's felony murder statute, a guilty verdict for the offence carries a mandatory life sentence.

The complications arose out of the fact that the judge has to decide if the felony murder statute allows the same crime that caused death to be considered as the underlying felony if the death occurred during the commission of several felony crimes such as robbery, arson and kidnapping.

Carroll informed that in determining sentence he will review the legislative history of the 2001 amendment that added assaults to the list of underlying felonies in the territory's felony murder statute.