A Justice Department prosecutor is arguing for the dismissal of murder counts against convicted killer Bradley "Hurtie" Maxwell.
In a Tuesday afternoon pre-trial conference at Territorial Court, Assistant Attorney General Guy Mitchell told Judge Ishmael Meyers that Maxwell could not have committed the September 1998 murder of Stanley Barbel as Maxwell was released from the Bureau of Corrections the day after Barbel was gunned down in Donoe.
Mitchell said his argument is substantiated by entries in a prison logbook, which was entered into evidence Tuesday.
Mitchell asked Meyers to dismiss the murder- and weapons-possession charges against Maxwell with prejudice.
Mitchell said an investigation is being conduction by the criminal section of the Justice Department to ensure that other prison logbooks corroborate the government's position that Maxwell was in jail on the day Barbel was killed.
Maxwell is serving time for a second-degree murder conviction in connection with the death of John Alfred Adams, the owner of the Wet Willy's Bar on Bjerge Gade.
The new charges were brought against Maxwell as the result of a police investigation and witness testimony.
Witnesses to the murder of Stanley Barbel have told police that Maxwell was identified as the suspect by his West Indian accent and scars on his hands.
The convicted Maxwell had led police on an all-out manhunt to take him into custody after he fatally shot Adams. He was again the subject of a manhunt when he literally walked out of a prison annex in Sub Base.
It was a V.I. Police Department detective and a Housing Authority police officer who, acting on a citizen's tip, took Maxwell into custody in the Donoe housing community after he walked out of the annex. At that point Maxwell had shaved his dreadlocks and was sporting a clean-shaven hairstyle.
