Derek Achong

A sen­tence re­view of a man con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing two women when he was a teenag­er in 1994 is ex­pect­ed to take place ear­ly next year.

When Chuck At­tin’s case came up for vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas on Wednes­day, sev­er­al re­ports re­quired for the sen­tence re­view were not yet avail­able.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­ney Daniel Khan, who rep­re­sent­ed At­tin pre­vi­ous­ly, in­formed the court that he would have to li­aise with the Pub­lic De­fend­ers De­part­ment as it was rep­re­sent­ing him now.

The case was ad­journed to Jan­u­ary 26.

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

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

At­tin, who was 16 years old at the time of the dou­ble mur­der, was held at the court’s plea­sure and giv­en a manda­to­ry min­i­mum term of 25 years in prison be­fore he could be con­sid­ered for re­lease.

At­tin ap­pealed the sen­tence but the Court of Ap­peal ruled that it was not ex­ces­sive con­sid­er­ing the bru­tal­i­ty of his crime.

Dur­ing his last sen­tence re­view in 2015, Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas ruled that 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.