Sto­ries by Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong @guardian.co.tt

A man ac­cused of mur­der based sole­ly on an al­leged jail­house con­fes­sion has been freed af­ter spend­ing 16 years on re­mand.

Shel­don Fras­er was ac­quit­ted on Mon­day by Jus­tice De­van Ram­per­sad af­ter the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) of­fered no ev­i­dence against him.

Fras­er and Ra­j­nath “Miggie” Bridglal had been charged with the mur­der of Sunil “Pep” Sookdeo on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2009.

Sookdeo was at his poul­try de­pot along Cap-de-Ville Road, Point Fortin, when two men pos­ing as cus­tomers ap­proached him. When they drew firearms, Sookdeo re­port­ed­ly grabbed a chair and con­front­ed them. He was shot in the chest dur­ing a strug­gle with the at­tack­ers.

Bridglal was first ar­rest­ed two months lat­er af­ter one of his broth­ers al­leged­ly told po­lice that he had con­fessed to the killing. Fras­er was al­so de­tained, but both men were re­leased af­ter an em­ploy­ee of Sookdeo failed to iden­ti­fy them in an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rade.

In Feb­ru­ary 2010, Bridglal was re­ar­rest­ed and charged af­ter an­oth­er broth­er claimed he had con­fessed in­volve­ment in the mur­der. Fras­er was al­so charged af­ter po­lice al­leged that he con­fessed to fel­low in­mate Si­mon Ovid while on re­mand for a sep­a­rate mat­ter.

Both men were rep­re­sent­ed by Michelle Ali and Kamei­ka Pe­ters of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment. Last year, Bridglal plead­ed guilty un­der the felony mur­der rule, un­der which the manda­to­ry death penal­ty is waived where a killing oc­curs dur­ing the com­mis­sion of a less­er of­fence. He was sen­tenced to 18 years in prison, with cred­it for time spent on re­mand.

Fras­er con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his in­no­cence. Dur­ing the 2015 pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, Ovid de­nied that Fras­er had con­fessed to him and sug­gest­ed that a po­lice of­fi­cer fab­ri­cat­ed the state­ment at­trib­uted to him. Deemed a hos­tile wit­ness, Ovid main­tained that po­si­tion when he tes­ti­fied at tri­al.

Pros­e­cu­tors ul­ti­mate­ly con­ced­ed the case, in­di­cat­ing they were un­able to lo­cate the po­lice of­fi­cer who record­ed the al­leged con­fes­sion, be­lieved to be out of the ju­ris­dic­tion, and had no oth­er sup­port­ing wit­ness­es.

Fras­er was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Tyler Marie Lee-King, while Des­ti­nee Gray and Maki­ra Mendez ap­peared on be­half of the DPP.