By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE Privy Council has dismissed the final appeal of Deon Antonio Watson, shutting the door on a decade-long challenge to his convictions from the violent 2012 robbery of Scotia Bank in Stella Maris.

The ruling affirms that a Bahamian jury acted rationally — not inconsistently — when it cleared Watson of robbery but convicted him of a series of firearm offences arising from the same incident.

Watson and co-accused Hancel Rolle stormed the Long Island bank branch on May 31, 2012, masked and carrying guns. Employees described two men: one tall and light-skinned, the other short and dark. Inside the bank, chaos unfolded — gunshots in offices and hallways, doors kicked in, cameras shattered, vault staff ordered at gunpoint to open the safe while the gunman counted down and threatened to kill someone.

That distinction between the two men proved decisive.

At their 2016 trial, the jury split the defendants’ outcomes. Rolle, identified as the shorter gunman who aimed at staff and grabbed money from drawers, was convicted of the robberies. Watson, identified as the taller man who forced the manager and assistant manager at gunpoint toward the vault, was found guilty of three counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and one count of damage. He was acquitted of the robbery counts.

Watson appealed on the basis that the verdicts made no sense: if the jury believed he was in the bank with a gun and threatening employees, then they should have convicted him of robbery as well. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument in 2020. The Privy Council has now dismissed it completely.

Writing for the Board, Lord Stephens ruled that the jury had acted precisely as the law allows — by separating the defendants’ actions count by count.

The prosecution had invited the jury to treat the two men as a joint venture. But the trial judge properly told the jury that joint venture was not mandatory: they could accept or reject it. According to the Privy Council, the jury clearly rejected it and focused instead on what each man personally did inside the bank.

For Rolle, witnesses described specific acts that matched robbery: pointing a gun in tellers’ faces, demanding cash, shooting at the camera, and firing at a glass partition behind which an employee stood. For Watson, witnesses described a different pattern: forcing the manager and assistant manager toward the vault, kicking open the manager’s door, firing at that door, and holding both women at gunpoint while threatening to start a deadly countdown if the vault did not open.

None of the robbery acts was attributed to Watson. All of the firearm-endangering acts were.

Because of that distinction, the Privy Council said, the split verdicts were entirely logical.

Watson also argued that his conviction for endangering the life of branch manager Winifred Curry was flawed because there was no evidence he knew she was inside her office when he shot at the door. The Privy Council rejected this argument immediately, noting that the issue had never been raised at trial and could not now be used to claim the jury acted irrationally.

He further contended that his caution statement — which he later disavowed — compelled the jury to treat the robbery as a joint venture. The Privy Council found that a jury is free to accept parts of a confession while rejecting other parts and is not bound to conclude a joint plan existed simply because two men carried guns into the same building.

The Board stressed that the law sets a high bar for overturning convictions on the basis of inconsistent verdicts. An appellant must prove that “no reasonable jury” could have reached the split result. In Watson’s case, the Board said, the opposite was true: the verdicts showed the jury worked carefully and methodically, matching each offence to the man witnesses saw commit it.

The Privy Council also pushed back at a suggestion in the Court of Appeal’s judgment that the jury should have been told their verdicts “must” be the same if they believed Watson was present. That, the Privy Council said, would have been a misdirection by assuming a joint venture that the jury was free to reject.

Concluding its judgment, the Privy Council said there was “no spectre of inconsistency” and dismissed Watson’s appeal in full.