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Friday, July 18, 2025

Landmark judgment in Court of Appeal: Convicts should get time off for remand stay

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20121009

In a land­mark judg­ment, the Court of Ap­peal yes­ter­day stat­ed con­vict­ed crim­i­nals should have the time spent await­ing tri­al in re­mand dis­count­ed from their sub­stan­tive sen­tence. It was made by Ap­peal Court Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine in a 20-page judg­ment in an ap­peal by con­vict­ed mur­der­er Wal­ter Bor­neo.

Nar­ine said: "In spite of the dif­fer­ence in priv­i­leges af­ford­ed to re­mand pris­on­ers, op­posed to con­vict­ed pris­on­ers, in this ju­ris­dic­tion, we are of the view that the pre­vail­ing con­di­tions on re­mand in our pris­ons are such that the en­tire pe­ri­od spent in pre-sen­tence cus­tody ought to be dis­count­ed from the sen­tence."

Nar­ine fur­ther ad­vised that High Court judges pre­sid­ing over crim­i­nal tri­als should state the sen­tence they ar­rived at and then deduct the time the ac­cused spent in re­mand for the process to be "clear and trans­par­ent." The process in the past has left Pris­ons Ser­vice au­thor­i­ties con­fused since the ex­act de­tails of a pris­on­er's sen­tence and time spent in re­mand were un­clear.

Bor­neo, 22, of Rox­bor­ough Street, Diego Mar­tin, was con­vict­ed in April last year of the mur­der of his neigh­bour Yusuff Joseph. He was 16 at the time. Ac­cord­ing to the facts of the case, on Oc­to­ber 9, 2006, Bor­neo and two friends at­tempt­ed to rob Joseph at his home. Af­ter ran­sack­ing his house, one of the men drew a gun and shot Joseph in his leg. He died a day lat­er at hos­pi­tal.

Bor­neo was sen­tenced to 15 years in prison by Jus­tice Car­la Brown-An­toine af­ter be­ing found guilty by a 12-mem­ber ju­ry in the Port-of-Spain As­sizes. In his ap­peal, which was pre­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Jagdeo Singh and Ha­sine Shaikh, Bor­neo chal­lenged his con­vic­tion and sen­tence. He claimed that dur­ing his tri­al Brown-An­toine had made six le­gal er­rors, in­clud­ing fail­ing to di­rect the ju­ry on Bor­neo's al­i­bi.

The judges dis­missed his ap­peal but ad­just­ed his sen­tence in ac­cor­dance with the process stat­ed by Nar­ine. Bor­neo will now serve 13 years in prison with hard labour. The state was pre­sent­ed by Dana See­ta­hal, SC, in the ap­peal.


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