Derek Achong

A Diego Mar­tin man, who has been on re­mand for mur­der for al­most two decades, has be­come the sec­ond mur­der ac­cused to be grant­ed bail based on a land­mark rul­ing from the Court of Ap­peal.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Car­la Brown-An­toine up­held Key­on “Rat­ti” An­tho­ny’s bail ap­pli­ca­tion and grant­ed him $500,000 bail.

In her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Brown-An­toine ruled that State pros­e­cu­tors failed to prove that An­tho­ny would be a threat to wit­ness­es or like­ly ab­scond if grant­ed bail. 

As part of the con­di­tions of his bail, An­tho­ny was or­dered to stay 100 me­tres away from wit­ness­es in his case, to not leave the coun­try and to re­port to the West End Po­lice Sta­tion twice week­ly un­til his case is even­tu­al­ly de­ter­mined at tri­al. 

He was al­so placed on a 9 am to 5 pm cur­few and ruled that he would be a suit­able can­di­date for elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing. 

An­tho­ny is ac­cused of mur­der­ing fel­low Diego Mar­tin res­i­dent Me­shach Samuel on De­cem­ber 10, 2003. Samuel was on his way to a shop in Riv­er Es­tate when he was am­bushed by three gun­men who shot him sev­er­al times. 

An­tho­ny was ar­rest­ed al­most a year af­ter Samuel’s mur­der and went on tri­al be­fore then High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Mark Mo­hammed in 2008.

The 12-mem­ber ju­ry in the tri­al could not come to a unan­i­mous ver­dict for An­tho­ny and a re­tri­al was or­dered. His re­tri­al in 2016 had to be abort­ed as he con­tract­ed tu­ber­cu­lo­sis while in prison. 

An­tho­ny walks with the aid of crutch­es be­cause of a gun­shot in­jury he sus­tained be­fore be­ing im­pli­cat­ed for Samuel’s mur­der. 

An­tho­ny is the sec­ond per­son to be grant­ed bail for mur­der fol­low­ing a land­mark Court of Ap­peal rul­ing in a con­sti­tu­tion­al law­suit brought by for­mer mur­der ac­cused Akil­li Charles. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment in late Feb­ru­ary, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Ap­pel­late Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er and Mal­colm Holdip ruled that Sec­tion 5(1) of the Bail Act of 1994, which pre­vi­ous­ly pre­clud­ed ju­di­cial of­fi­cers from con­sid­er­ing bail for per­sons ac­cused of mur­der, was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. 

The ap­peal pan­el ruled that the seg­ment of the Bail Act was not rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able in a so­ci­ety that is con­cerned about the rights and free­doms of the in­di­vid­ual. 

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al sought a sus­pen­sion of the rul­ing pend­ing a fi­nal ap­peal but it was re­fused by both the lo­cal Ap­peal Court and the Privy Coun­cil. 

In an af­fi­davit in sup­port of the stay, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, re­vealed that with­in six weeks of the judge­ment, there were 78 bail ap­pli­ca­tions. 

Gas­pard al­so sought to ex­plain the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by his of­fice in re­spond­ing to the mul­ti­tude of ap­pli­ca­tions, in­clud­ing be­ing ham­pered by the fact that it had to re­ly on the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and T&T Prison Ser­vice for re­ports on pris­on­ers to ad­e­quate­ly re­spond.

An ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing of the ap­peal over Charles’ judge­ment is ex­pect­ed to be heard by the Privy Coun­cil ear­ly next month. 

In late March, Bel­mont res­i­dent Joel King be­came the first per­son to ben­e­fit from the judge­ment when he was grant­ed $1.5 mil­lion bail by High Court Mas­ter Nali­ni Singh, who ap­plied al­most two dozen con­di­tions.

 King, how­ev­er, has not been able to ac­cess bail as he faces sep­a­rate crim­i­nal charges for which he is yet to be grant­ed bail. 

Mas­ter Singh’s de­ci­sion is cur­rent­ly be­ing ap­pealed by the DPP’s Of­fice. 

An­tho­ny was rep­re­sent­ed by Ravi Ra­j­coomar and Valmi­ki Ma­habir, while Giselle Fer­gu­son-Heller rep­re­sent­ed the DPP’s Of­fice. 

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