DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 32-year-old man from Ari­ma has been ac­quit­ted of mur­der­ing an Arou­ca busi­ness­man in 2021.

An­drew Sut­ton, of Mal­abar, Ari­ma, was found not guilty at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Nali­ni Singh on Mon­day.

Sut­ton, who was rep­re­sent­ed by Deli­cia Hel­wig-Robert­son and Sara Julien of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment (PDD), was the sec­ond man ac­cused of mur­der­ing Nicholas Mo­hith to be freed this year.

In June, Re­nal­do “Hamza” Thomas, of Uni­ty Lane, Cara­po, was dis­charged by High Court Mas­ter Sarah De Sil­va af­ter State pros­e­cu­tors of­fered no ev­i­dence against him dur­ing his suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing.

On March 11, 2021, Mo­hith, 31, was at his fam­i­ly’s home along the East­ern Main Road in Arou­ca, where his au­to air con­di­tion­ing busi­ness was al­so lo­cat­ed, when an un­masked gun­man en­tered and shot him in his ab­domen be­fore run­ning away.

Mo­hith was tak­en to the Ari­ma Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope, where he died while un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery.

The suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing for Thomas and Sut­ton was ex­pect­ed to com­mence in Au­gust last year, but was post­poned be­cause State pros­e­cu­tors failed to dis­close the ev­i­dence against them to their de­fence at­tor­neys.

Al­though Mas­ter De Sil­va grant­ed sev­er­al ex­ten­sions, there was no dis­clo­sure in re­la­tion to Thomas when the case came up for hear­ing in June.

State pros­e­cu­tors sought an­oth­er ex­ten­sion, but Mas­ter De Sil­va re­fused based on the fact that, like pre­vi­ous­ly, they sought to make the ap­pli­ca­tion af­ter miss­ing the dead­line in­stead of giv­ing 14 days’ no­tice as re­quired un­der the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules.

Thomas and Sut­ton were ar­raigned, and pros­e­cu­tors of­fi­cial­ly in­di­cat­ed that they had no ev­i­dence to of­fer in re­la­tion to Thomas.

Mas­ter De Sil­va then dis­charged him un­der sec­tion 24 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA) on the ba­sis that the ev­i­dence against him did not meet the nec­es­sary thresh­old.

She not­ed that the dis­charge was not based on the pro­vi­sions of the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules deal­ing with non-com­pli­ance with dis­clo­sure dead­lines, as she ref­er­enced the fact that in oth­er cas­es, ac­cused per­sons, who were freed un­der such, were im­me­di­ate­ly re­ar­rest­ed and the in­dict­ment re­filed against them.

The case against Sut­ton was con­tin­ued as pros­e­cu­tors dis­closed ev­i­dence against him, in­clud­ing CCTV footage of the shoot­ing.

De­spite the out­come, Thomas was not im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased from re­mand as he had a pend­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing charge be­fore the To­ba­go Mag­is­trate’s Court, for which he was not grant­ed bail be­cause of the mur­der charge.

Thomas was rep­re­sent­ed by Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj. The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) was rep­re­sent­ed by Sher­von Nor­eiga and Cassie Bis­ram.