Senior Reporter
derek.achong@guardian.co.tt
Marlon King will have to face a third trial for the brutal murder of Amy Emily Annamunthodo.
A retrial was ordered for King after his second trial before High Court Judge Hayden St Clair-Douglas ended in a hung jury on Tuesday.
The 12-member jury were unable to arrive at a unanimous verdict on King’s guilt or innocence after deliberating on the evidence for four hours at the O’Meara Judicial Centre.
King was accused of murdering Annamunthodo, who was his stepdaughter, at his home at Ste Madeleine Road, Marabella, on May 15, 2006.
Medical reports showed that Annamunthodo was burnt with cigarettes an hour before she died. She also suffered multiple internal and external injuries throughout her body, including a broken rib and bruised organs.
At the time of her death, she weighed only 33 pounds and was underdeveloped.
In 2012, King was convicted of the crime and was sentenced to hang by former High Court Judge Anthony Carmona.
In 2021, Appellate Judges Alice Yorke-Soo Hon, Mark Mohammed, and Malcolm Holdip ruled that Carmona made several errors when he presided over King’s trial.
The appeal panel ruled that in summing up the case to the jury, that eventually convicted King, Carmona misdirected them on the evidence of King’s ex-wife Lou-Ann Davis, who testified over domestic abuse she allegedly endured, and of his neighbour Anthony Rocke, who testified that he saw King punching the child 20 to 30 times while she hung from a cloth tied to her hair and attached to a door.
During the trial, King claimed that he had left the child with her mother Anita and Rocke and suggested that he (Rocke) was in fact the culprit.
In their decision, the appeal panel rejected submissions from King’s attorneys that he should be acquitted of the charge based on the inordinate length of time between the offence and an eventual retrial.
While the panel accepted that the pace of the criminal justice system was “far from ideal”, it noted that such delays were not sufficient to trump the public’s interest in having King’s innocence or guilt determined in a fresh trial.
“In our view, the balance has been tipped in favour of the ordering of a retrial. We are satisfied that the interests of justice will be served by so ordering,” Justice Mohammed, who delivered the panel’s unanimous decision, said.
King was represented by Russell Warner and Toni Roberts. He was prosecuted by Kimberly Gunness, and Tricia Samuel.
