Sascha Wil­son

A Cou­va woman has plead­ed guilty to bigamy af­ter ad­mit­ting that she mar­ried a man with­out di­vorc­ing her first hus­band in 1995. Lynette Phillip, 55 will be sen­tenced af­ter the law term opens in Sep­tem­ber. Jus­tice Ge­of­fery Hen­der­son, who is hear­ing the mat­ter in the San Fer­nan­do Sec­ond As­sizes, said on Thurs­day, "This of­fence puz­zles the court as to what will be be­hind this."

The charge states that on No­vem­ber 7, 1995 Phillip mar­ried George Wild­man dur­ing the life­time of her hus­band Leroy Phillip. The court heard that Phillip's sec­ond mar­riage oc­curred just a month af­ter she broke off an 18-year mar­riage with her first hus­band. State at­tor­ney An­gel­i­ca Teelucks­ingh said Phillip was mar­ried to Phillip on June 19, 1977 for 18 and a half years. Her maid­en name was Ar­rindell.

She left her first hus­band in Oc­to­ber 1995 and on No­vem­ber 1995 she mar­ried Wild­man at the War­den's Of­fice in Cou­va. Some­time af­ter, Wild­man re­ceived in­for­ma­tion and went to the Hall of Jus­tice in Port of Spain where he ob­tained a le­gal doc­u­ment per­tain­ing to Phillip and her first hus­band Leroy.

Wild­man al­so ob­tained a copy of his mar­riage cer­tifi­cate in which Phillip rep­re­sent­ed her­self to be a spin­ster. Wild­man sub­se­quent­ly con­tact­ed his wife's first hus­band. Teelucks­ingh said it was on­ly in 2000 that Phillip's first hus­band was served to go to the High Court for di­vorce pro­ceed­ings. The di­vorce was fi­nalised on April 25, 2006.

Wild­man re­port­ed the mat­ter and Con­sta­ble Anand Bis­soon con­duct­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions. He sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed and charged Phillip. On Thurs­day, the State ten­dered copies of the two mar­riage cer­tifi­cates and the di­vorce doc­u­ment. Phillip's lawyer, Kern Ed­wards, re­served mit­i­ga­tion plea and re­quest­ed a pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer's re­port.

Not­ing that her bail had ex­pired since she plead­ed guilty, the judge fixed new bail in the sum of $25,000. Point­ing out that the re­port would take three weeks to com­plete and the court clos­es next week, the judge ad­journed the mat­ter to Sep­tem­ber 27.

This is the sec­ond time in a month that a per­son has plead­ed guilty to a bigamy charge at the San Fer­nan­do As­sizes. Last month Jus­tice An­tho­ny Car­mona fined 43-year-old bigamist Dex­ter Alexan­der $5,000 and or­dered him to pay $10,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to his sec­ond wife Rhon­da Forbes.