An­na-Lisa Paul

The day af­ter the charge against Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith was dis­missed by Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar last Wednes­day, the pros­e­cu­tion filed an ap­peal at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates Court. On Wednes­day, Ay­ers-Cae­sar dis­missed the charge against Grif­fith af­ter re­ject­ing the pros­e­cu­tion's ap­pli­ca­tion to amend the charge.

Grif­fith was charged with us­ing in­sult­ing lan­guage to the an­noy­ance of per­sons in an in­ci­dent on March 8, 2012, at Dock Road, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain. On Jan­u­ary 2, pros­e­cu­tor George Bus­by ap­plied to amend the word­ing of the charge from "to the an­noy­ance of per­sons on the said road" to "which might tend to pro­voke any oth­er per­son to com­mit a breach of the peace."

Ay­ers-Cae­sar said, "The court is of the view that the amend­ment can be al­lowed, but to al­low it at this stage would re­sult in a prej­u­dice against the de­fen­dant."