Derek Achong

A 12-mem­ber ju­ry of eight men and four women has been se­lect­ed to sit in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der tri­al of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man.The main ju­ry pan­el was filled dur­ing the sec­ond day of ju­ry se­lec­tion at the Port-of-Spain Sec­ond Crim­i­nal Court yes­ter­day.Ju­ry se­lec­tion will con­tin­ue be­fore Jus­tice Mal­colm Holdip for the rest of the week un­til six al­ter­nate ju­rors are se­lect­ed.

More than 400 po­ten­tial ju­rors were sum­moned to be se­lect­ed for the ju­ry. Last week, a quar­ter of them were ex­empt­ed af­ter they said they knew the lawyers, the ac­cused men or the wit­ness­es.Those who were able to prove they suf­fered from med­ical con­di­tions were al­so ex­empt­ed.Af­ter the se­lec­tion process is com­plet­ed and the ju­ry is em­pan­elled, sev­er­al case-man­age­ment hear­ings will be held be­fore the State opens its case against the 12 ac­cused men in mid-Sep­tem­ber.

The tri­al is ex­pect­ed to last be­tween four and six months. and more than 70 state wit­ness­es are ex­pect­ed to tes­ti­fy.On tri­al are Al­lan "Scan­ny" Mar­tin, Sher­von "Buffy" Pe­ters, Kei­da Gar­cia, broth­ers Mar­lon and Earl Trim­ming­ham, Ronald Arm­strong, An­to­nio Charles, Joel Fras­er, Lyn­don James, De­von Pe­ters, An­tho­ny Dwayne Gloster and Jamille Gar­cia.A 13th ac­cused, Raphael Williams, died in prison in 2011.

Their de­fence team in­cludes Ul­ric Sker­ritt, Sel­wyn Mo­hammed, Wayne Sturge, Col­in Selvon and Lennox Sankars­ingh.Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, Gilbert Pe­ter­son and Dana See­ta­hal are pros­e­cut­ing.