A High Court Judge is sched­uled to de­ter­mine whether a man con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing two women when he was a teenag­er in 1994 is fit to be re­leased in Oc­to­ber. 

Jus­tice Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas de­ferred his de­ci­sion on Chuck At­tin’s sen­tence re­view to Oc­to­ber 12 at the end of a brief vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas not­ed that the court, pros­e­cu­tors and At­tin’s le­gal team had re­ceived re­ports which need to be con­sid­ered be­fore de­cid­ing whether At­tin had been suf­fi­cient­ly re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed. 

One of the re­ports is from the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons over At­tin’s dis­ci­pli­nary record in prison and an­oth­er is from the Gold­en Grove State Prison chap­lain over whether At­tin had been re­cep­tive to re­li­gious teach­ing and in­struc­tion of­fered dur­ing his stint at the fa­cil­i­ty. A third re­port re­lates to a psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment on At­tin per­formed ear­li­er this year and the fourth deals with a sci­en­tif­ic as­sess­ment of the risk of him re­of­fend­ing if re­leased. 

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas did not di­vulge the con­tents of the re­ports, as he mere­ly set dead­lines for fil­ing of sub­mis­sions and ad­journed the case. 

In 1997, At­tin and Noel Seep­er­sad were con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing 23-year-old Can­dice Scott and Karen Sa Gomes, 31. Both women were killed at Scott’s West­moor­ings home on Ju­ly 11, 1994.

Seep­er­sad was giv­en the death penal­ty but his sen­tence was com­mut­ed to life im­pris­on­ment.

At­tin, who was 16 years old at the time of the mur­ders, was held at the court’s plea­sure and giv­en a manda­to­ry min­i­mum 25 years in prison be­fore he could be con­sid­ered for re­lease. At­tin ap­pealed the sen­tence but the Court of Ap­peal ruled it was not ex­ces­sive con­sid­er­ing the bru­tal­i­ty of his crime.

Dur­ing his last sen­tence re­view in 2015, Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas ruled At­tin was not yet fit to be re­leased.

“Clear­ly, you have changed but the re­al ques­tion is by how much. By re­leas­ing a man with no life skills who en­gaged in a se­ri­ous crime is not some­thing any court can take light­ly,” St Clair-Dou­glas said at the time.

He ad­vised At­tin to en­rol in pro­grammes while in prison to make it eas­i­er to rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety up­on his even­tu­al re­lease.

At the time of his last re­view, At­tin, now 42, had al­most three years left to com­plete his min­i­mum sen­tence. He has now ex­ceed­ed it.

At­tin was rep­re­sent­ed by Daniel Khan and Aris­sa Ma­haraj, while Maria Lyons-Ed­wards and Veon­na Neale-Munroe rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).