Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Crim­i­nal at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali says there is “ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong” with Ka­ia Sealy seek­ing ad­di­tion­al time to re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go as she con­tin­ues med­ical treat­ment abroad fol­low­ing in­juries sus­tained in a shoot­ing in­ci­dent.

Ali made the com­ments on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to ques­tion on Sealy’s ap­peal to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to de­lay her re­turn while she un­der­goes med­ical care in the Unit­ed States.

Ac­cord­ing to Ali, the court may take med­ical cir­cum­stances in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly if sup­port­ed by doc­u­men­ta­tion from treat­ing physi­cians.

“There is ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong with she seek­ing ad­di­tion­al time in or­der to re­turn to Trinidad on the ba­sis of the med­ical care that she needs,” he said.

He not­ed that Sealy re­port­ed­ly suf­fered four gun­shot wounds and may be deal­ing with paral­y­sis, adding that her con­di­tion could re­quire spe­cialised treat­ment not read­i­ly avail­able dur­ing com­mer­cial air trav­el.

“The in­va­sive surgery that may be re­quired, or the in­va­sive treat­ment, may war­rant spe­cial el­e­vat­ed lev­els of med­ical care that can­not be pro­vid­ed oral­ly,” Ali said.

He added that if med­ical ev­i­dence con­firms she is un­fit to trav­el, that would be a rel­e­vant fac­tor for au­thor­i­ties as­sess­ing her re­quest for time.

Ali al­so point­ed out that Sealy is not ab­scond­ing, but has pro­vid­ed a known ad­dress while abroad and is en­gag­ing with au­thor­i­ties, which he said dif­fers from sit­u­a­tions where sus­pects evade ar­rest.

He said if there are con­cerns about whether she is gen­uine­ly un­well, law en­force­ment agen­cies could co­or­di­nate with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, in­clud­ing US au­thor­i­ties, to mon­i­tor her con­di­tion and move­ments.

“If she is ma­lin­ger­ing… then steps can be tak­en… in or­der to present them­selves in the US and work in tan­dem with US se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, po­lice, fed­er­al agents,” he said, adding that In­ter­pol and oth­er mech­a­nisms could al­so be en­gaged if nec­es­sary.

Turn­ing to the charges of manslaugh­ter, Ali broke down the le­gal thresh­olds in­volved, ex­plain­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween mur­der and manslaugh­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly vol­un­tary and in­vol­un­tary forms.

He said mur­der re­quires proof of in­tent to kill or cause se­ri­ous bod­i­ly harm, while manslaugh­ter cov­ers sit­u­a­tions where in­tent may be ab­sent or mit­i­gat­ed by cir­cum­stances such as provo­ca­tion or neg­li­gence.

Ali said vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter can arise where a per­son in­tends to kill but acts un­der provo­ca­tion, lead­ing to a loss of self-con­trol.

He al­so out­lined in­vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter, in­clud­ing gross neg­li­gence and un­law­ful act manslaugh­ter, which he said may be the area most rel­e­vant to the case un­der dis­cus­sion.

He ex­plained that an un­law­ful act of manslaugh­ter can arise where a death oc­curs as a re­sult of a dan­ger­ous or un­law­ful act, even if there was no in­ten­tion to kill.

“In that in­stance, but for her ac­tions in terms of fir­ing a Glock at the po­lice… the po­lice would not have had rea­son to re­turn fire,” he said, stress­ing this re­mains part of the al­le­ga­tions be­fore the court.

Ali said foren­sic ev­i­dence will be crit­i­cal in de­ter­min­ing what ac­tu­al­ly oc­curred, in­clud­ing bal­lis­tic analy­sis, gun­shot residue and au­top­sy find­ings.

Ali al­so ad­dressed ques­tions sur­round­ing the ini­tial po­lice re­sponse and sub­se­quent re­lease of in­for­ma­tion about al­leged firearms in­volve­ment months af­ter the in­ci­dent. He said de­layed dis­clo­sure can con­tribute to pub­lic spec­u­la­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in cas­es where video footage cir­cu­lates wide­ly on so­cial me­dia.