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Friday, October 10, 2025

Accused challenges delay in Dana Seetahal case

by

60 days ago
20250809

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing a man await­ing tri­al for the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal, SC, have chal­lenged the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard for his of­fice’s fail­ure to file in­dict­ments al­most five years af­ter he and a group of men were com­mit­ted to stand tri­al for the crime.

Earl Richards’ lawyers, Criston J Williams and Aaron Lewis, ques­tioned Gas­pard’s claims on Thurs­day, as they re­spond­ed to a sta­tus re­port on the case pro­vid­ed in ear­ly Ju­ly.

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the duo said: “The re­sponse pro­vides no clar­i­ty to the claimant and lacks rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the un­due de­lay.”

Gas­pard was or­dered to file the sta­tus re­port by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in, af­ter Richards filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing the de­lay in fil­ing the in­dict­ments, which would start the pro­ce­dure for the case to go to tri­al be­fore a High Court judge and ju­ry or a judge-alone based on the choice of the ac­cused men.

In his re­port, Gas­pard claimed that he was in­clined to file the in­dict­ments but was still in the process of de­ter­min­ing whether the case was ev­i­den­tial­ly sound and in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

He said while a mag­is­trate had con­sid­ered the case and ruled there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence for the men to face tri­al, he now has to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the ev­i­dence based on his pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion un­der Sec­tion 90 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“In ex­er­cis­ing my pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion, I must ap­ply the ev­i­den­tial and pub­lic in­ter­est tests as laid out in my Code for Pros­e­cu­tors, which re­quires me to analyse ob­jec­tive­ly, fair­ly, crit­i­cal­ly, and in­de­pen­dent­ly, all the ev­i­dence led be­fore the mag­is­trate and con­sid­er the pub­lic in­ter­est and the good ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice,” Gas­pard said.

He said he had to en­sure there was suf­fi­cient co­gent ad­mis­si­ble ev­i­dence by as­sess­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of wit­ness­es.

“In this case in par­tic­u­lar, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the ev­i­dence con­sists of in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, call da­ta records, and CCTV footage, and thus spe­cial care has to be tak­en in as­sess­ing that type of ev­i­dence in de­ter­min­ing whether an in­dict­ment should be filed,” Gas­pard said.

He al­so not­ed that the process was de­layed by re­stric­tions dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, in­clud­ing the clo­sure of court fa­cil­i­ties.

Gas­pard al­so point­ed out that the over four-year wait ex­pe­ri­enced by Richards and his co-ac­cused was not un­usu­al in the lo­cal crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, as he not­ed that in­dict­ments against a group of po­lice of­fi­cers, for­mal­ly ac­cused of mur­der­ing three friends from Moru­ga in 2011, were filed al­most a decade af­ter their pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry con­clud­ed.

Richards’ lawyers chal­lenged Gas­pard’s claims over gen­er­al de­lays in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

“The dys­func­tion­al sys­tem is no ex­cuse for the pro­ce­dur­al de­lay over this pe­ri­od of time,” they said.

Stat­ing that the pan­dem­ic did not af­fect the process, they said: “The ju­di­cial sys­tem was con­sid­ered an es­sen­tial ser­vice dur­ing the COVID-19 pe­ri­od.”

They al­so point­ed out that Gas­pard failed to ad­dress bias al­le­ga­tions that arose dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry in the case, based on out-of-court com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween the pre­sid­ing mag­is­trate and a pros­e­cu­tor.

“The pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry and the pros­e­cu­tion con­tin­ued in bad faith, giv­ing rise to pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct,” they said.

“The fil­ing of an in­dict­ment and your ‘in­cli­na­tion’ falls short of sat­is­fy­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est test, be­cause if this in­for­ma­tion is placed be­fore an im­par­tial, hon­est, and in­tel­li­gent per­son, it will bring the in­tegri­ty and fair­ness of the tri­al process in­to dis­re­pute.”

They gave Gas­pard 14 days in which to re­spond to the ques­tions.

The gen­er­al is­sue of the slow fil­ing rate of in­dict­ments by the DPP’s Of­fice was raised by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie dur­ing his an­nu­al ad­dress for the open­ing of the 2020/2021 Law Term in Oc­to­ber 2020.

Stat­ing that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was on the verge of col­lapse, CJ Archie then ques­tioned why on­ly 12 in­dict­ments were filed that year.

In re­sponse, Gas­pard sought to de­fend his of­fice, as he claimed it was due to sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing peren­ni­al short staffing, lim­it­ed of­fice space, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and a de­ci­sion tak­en by the Ju­di­cia­ry to re­ly sole­ly on the elec­tron­ic fil­ing of court doc­u­ments.

He al­so claimed that while his of­fice had filed be­tween 150 and 300 in­dict­ments be­tween 2010 and 2020, there was a long list of in­dict­ments, which pre-dat­ed them, that were still await­ing tri­al.

With the tenth an­niver­sary of See­ta­hal’s mur­der last year, there was again dis­course be­tween Gas­pard and the Ju­di­cia­ry over the fil­ing of in­dict­ments in her case.

While Gas­pard claimed his of­fice was await­ing the vo­lu­mi­nous case file from the pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry, need­ed to file the in­dict­ments, the Ju­di­cia­ry claimed it was sent elec­tron­i­cal­ly.

The Ju­di­cia­ry amend­ed its rules for elec­tron­ic copies to be used, but Gas­pard still main­tained that the hard copy was re­quired un­der the pro­vi­sion of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA).

About See­ta­hal’s case

See­ta­hal was shot dead be­hind the wheel of her SUV while dri­ving along Hamil­ton Hold­er Street in Wood­brook on May 4, 2014.

On Ju­ly 25, 2015, Ra­jaee Ali, his broth­ers Ish­mael and Hamid; De­vaughn Cum­mings, Ri­car­do Stew­art, Earl Richards, Stephan Cum­mings, Kevin Parkin­son, Le­ston Gon­za­les; Ro­get Bouch­er and Gareth Wise­man were charged with the crime.

Ali’s wife Sta­cy Grif­fith, De­on Pe­ters and David Ec­tor were charged un­der the An­ti-Gang Act for be­ing mem­bers of a gang, while Grif­fith was ad­di­tion­al­ly charged with as­sist­ing the gang.

The gang charges were ini­tial­ly dis­missed based on the fact that they were laid in­dictably (heard and de­ter­mined by a High Court Judge and ju­ry), as op­posed to sum­mar­i­ly (heard and de­ter­mined by a mag­is­trate), as re­quired for first-time of­fend­ers un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

The is­sue re­sult­ed in Pe­ters and Ec­tor be­ing freed. Grif­fith re­mained be­fore the court, as she faced the ad­di­tion­al charge that was prop­er­ly laid. Grif­fith’s charge for as­sist­ing the gang has since been dis­con­tin­ued by the DPP’s Of­fice.

The Court of Ap­peal even­tu­al­ly re­versed the de­ci­sion and ef­fec­tive­ly re­in­stat­ed the charges for be­ing mem­bers of a gang.

As Ec­tor was mur­dered in Ju­ly 2018, on­ly Pe­ters was re­ar­rest­ed and recharged with the of­fence.

In De­cem­ber 2017, the mur­der charge was dis­con­tin­ued against Stephan Cum­mings, af­ter he was made a State wit­ness. He was in­stead charged with con­spir­a­cy to mur­der See­ta­hal.

The mem­bers of the group were com­mit­ted to stand tri­al in 2020.


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