The kidnapping case against Troy A. Harrigan will proceed after a mistrial was declared last month when his co-defendant was shot and killed just as the jury was to begin deliberations.
In a ruling this week, Superior Court Judge Denise M. Francois ordered that a pretrial conference will be held July 21 on St. Thomas to set dates for jury selection and a new trial.
Harrigan and co-defendant Desie C. Henry Jr. were charged in September 2020 with kidnapping to exact money and multiple assault and weapons charges in connection with the alleged abduction of a man on St. Thomas.
The victim told police he was lured to a secluded location, bound with chains, and beaten and tortured over two days as Harrigan and Henry demanded $800,000 they believed he had stolen, according to court records. He eventually escaped and was rescued by a V.I. Police officer who happened to be patrolling in the area.
After years of delays and one false start last August when jury selection fell short, the pair went to trial Feb. 28. However, Henry, 32, was shot and killed outside the Paul M. Pearson Gardens housing community March 5 as he headed to court that morning in an attack that one Justice Department official termed an execution.
Francois subsequently granted an emergency motion for a mistrial, filed March 6 by Harrigan’s attorney Robert Leycock Jr., who said Henry’s murder “while charges remained pending against him has tainted the empaneled jury’s ability to deliberate fairly and impartially and constitutes manifest necessity for a mistrial. No curative instruction can adequately address the prejudice that flows from this extraordinary and tragic circumstance,” he wrote.
“Having received the motion and under the circumstances (the murder of co-Defendant Desie C. Henry, Jr. at about 8:43 a.m. on March 5, 2026, before the jury was charged and began its deliberations), the Court finds that there is no alternative but to declare a mistrial for reasons of manifest necessity and to dismiss the jury,” Francois said.
Criminal Chief Timothy Perry said at the time that a mistrial would not deter prosecutors from pursuing the case. “We expect this matter will come back up for trial,” he told the Source, adding that “it is not the standard of justice in the Virgin Islands that a trial can be disrupted through extrajudicial acts like the murder of this young man.”
