Derek Achong

The Court of Ap­peal has re­in­stat­ed crim­i­nal charges against two men who were pre­vi­ous­ly freed by mag­is­trates.

Ap­pel­late Judges Al­lan Men­don­ca and Gillian Lucky re­vived the charges against Kevon Bap­tiste and Leslie Joseph, af­ter up­hold­ing ap­peals brought by the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP)on Fri­day.

In Bap­tiste’s ap­peal, the DPP’s Of­fice was chal­leng­ing a mag­is­trate’s de­ci­sion to dis­miss a se­ries of crim­i­nal charges against him, af­ter the po­lice of­fi­cer who laid the charges failed to at­tend the tri­al of the case.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal, State pros­e­cu­tor Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal said the Ari­ma mag­is­trate took the de­ci­sion de­spite be­ing in­formed that the po­lice of­fi­cer was at­tend­ing an­oth­er case in the Tu­na­puna Mag­is­trates’ Court at the time.

Bap­tiste was not present for the ap­peal and was not rep­re­sent­ed by an at­tor­ney.

The ap­peal pan­el up­held the ap­peal, as it agreed that the ad­journ­ment should have been grant­ed based on the of­fi­cer’s rea­son­able ex­cuse for his ab­sence.

In the sec­ond case, the DPP’s Of­fice was chal­leng­ing an­oth­er mag­is­trate’s de­ci­sion to free Joseph from a charge of us­ing an­noy­ing lan­guage to pro­voke per­sons to com­mit a breach of the peace be­cause of how it was phrased.

At the start of the ap­peal, Jus­tice Men­don­ca stat­ed that the pan­el felt that the mag­is­trate “got it aw­ful­ly wrong,” as his de­ci­sion was based on his mem­o­ry of the leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing the of­fence and not what the statute ac­tu­al­ly stat­ed.

“He did not take the time out to look at the sec­tion to see what it says,” Jus­tice Men­don­ca said.

“It seems to sug­gest that mag­is­trates are not pro­vid­ed with law books and have to re­call from mem­o­ry,” he added.

Nei­ther Joseph nor his at­tor­ney was present to make sub­mis­sions on the is­sue.

The ap­peal was up­held and the charge was re­in­stat­ed.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, the ap­peal pan­el al­so dis­missed the ap­peal of an Ari­ma woman who was chal­leng­ing her con­vic­tion and sen­tence for co­caine pos­ses­sion.

The pan­el de­ci­sion was based on the non-ap­pear­ance of the ap­pel­lant, Mar­i­lyn Layne.

The pan­el sought to give a warn­ing to oth­er ap­pel­lants over the need to prop­er­ly pur­sue their ap­peals.

“Ap­peals can­not be filed and ap­pel­lants dis­ap­pear. They must show in­ter­est in pros­e­cut­ing their ap­peals,” Jus­tice Men­don­ca said.

While the pan­el af­firmed the $15,000 fine she re­ceived af­ter be­ing con­vict­ed, it not­ed that Layne could still ap­ply to re­in­state the ap­peal.

The DPP’s Of­fice was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by As­sis­tant DPP Tri­cia Hudlin-Coop­er.