Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard has again de­nied al­le­ga­tions of un­due de­lay in pros­e­cut­ing ten men ac­cused of mur­der­ing Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal in 2014. 

Gas­pard ad­dressed the is­sue as he sought to com­ply with a court or­der re­cent­ly is­sued by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in based on a law­suit brought by one of the ac­cused men, Earl Richards.

Through the law­suit, Richards sought a sta­tus re­port on his and his co-ac­cused’s case as well as an ex­pla­na­tion on why in­dict­ments have not been filed against them by Gas­pard’s Of­fice, af­ter they were com­mit­ted to stand tri­al for the crime at the end of their pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry on Ju­ly 23, 2020. 

The fil­ing of in­dict­ments would com­mence the pro­ce­dure for the case to go to tri­al be­fore a High Court Judge and ju­ry or a judge alone, based on the choice of the ac­cused men. 

In a let­ter sent on Mon­day and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Gas­pard said, “I am in­clined to­wards in­dict­ing the Claimant, how­ev­er, I am still in the process of as­sess­ing the vi­a­bil­i­ty of an in­dict­ment as is nec­es­sary for me to sat­is­fy my­self that pre­fer­ring an in­dict­ment would be both ev­i­den­tial­ly sound as well as in the pub­lic in­ter­est.”  

He said that while a mag­is­trate had con­sid­ered the case and ruled that there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence for the men to face tri­al, he now has to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the ev­i­dence based on his pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion un­der Sec­tion 90 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. 

“In ex­er­cis­ing my pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion, I must ap­ply the ev­i­den­tial and pub­lic in­ter­est tests as laid out in my Code for Pros­e­cu­tors which re­quires me to analyse ob­jec­tive­ly, fair­ly, crit­i­cal­ly, and in­de­pen­dent­ly all the ev­i­dence led be­fore the Mag­is­trate and con­sid­er the pub­lic in­ter­est and the good ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice,” Gas­pard said. 

He said that he had to en­sure that there was suf­fi­cient, co­gent, ad­mis­si­ble ev­i­dence by as­sess­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of wit­ness­es. 

“In this case in par­tic­u­lar, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the ev­i­dence con­sists of in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, call da­ta records, and CCTV footage and thus spe­cial care has to be tak­en in as­sess­ing that type of ev­i­dence in de­ter­min­ing whether an in­dict­ment should be filed,” Gas­pard said. 

“How­ev­er, even if there was no such ev­i­dence in the case of a se­ri­ous charge such as this with mul­ti­ple ac­cused, it usu­al­ly takes a few years to lay an in­dict­ment af­ter com­mit­tal,” he added. 

He al­so not­ed that the process was de­layed by re­stric­tions dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, in­clud­ing the clo­sure of court fa­cil­i­ties. 

“It was on­ly in Jan­u­ary 2024 that the Ju­di­cia­ry sent to my of­fices an elec­tron­ic copy of the Claimant’s com­mit­tal bun­dle,” he said.

Gas­pard al­so point­ed out that the over four-year wait ex­pe­ri­enced by Richards and his co-ac­cused was not un­usu­al in the lo­cal crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, as he not­ed that in­dict­ments against a group of po­lice of­fi­cers, for­mal­ly ac­cused of mur­der­ing three friends from Moru­ga in 2011, were filed al­most a decade af­ter their pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry con­clud­ed.  

“The crim­i­nal process in T&T is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly slow due, in part, to the statu­to­ry frame­work, lim­it­ed hu­man re­sources and the num­ber of mur­der mat­ters in the dock­et of the Of­fice of the DPP—ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400,” Gas­pard said. 

The gen­er­al is­sue of the slow fil­ing rate of in­dict­ments by the DPP’s Of­fice was raised by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie while de­liv­er­ing his an­nu­al ad­dress for the open­ing of the 2020/2021 Law Term in Oc­to­ber 2020. 

Stat­ing that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was on the verge of col­lapse, CJ Archie ques­tioned why on­ly 12 in­dict­ments were filed that year. 

In re­sponse, Gas­pard sought to de­fend his of­fice as he claimed that it was due to sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing peren­ni­al short staffing, lim­it­ed of­fice space, the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and a de­ci­sion tak­en by the Ju­di­cia­ry to re­ly sole­ly on the elec­tron­ic fil­ing of court doc­u­ments. 

He al­so claimed that while his of­fice had filed be­tween 150 and 300 in­dict­ments be­tween 2010 and 2020, there was a long list of in­dict­ments, which pre-dat­ed them, that were still await­ing tri­al. 

With the 10th an­niver­sary of See­ta­hal’s mur­der, last year, there was again dis­course be­tween Gas­pard and the Ju­di­cia­ry over the fil­ing of in­dict­ments in her case. 

While Gas­pard claimed that his of­fice was await­ing the vo­lu­mi­nous case file from the pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry, need­ed to file the in­dict­ments, the Ju­di­cia­ry claimed that it had been sent elec­tron­i­cal­ly. 

The Ju­di­cia­ry amend­ed its rules for elec­tron­ic copies to be used, but Gas­pard still main­tained that the hard copy was re­quired un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA). 

Richards was rep­re­sent­ed by Criston J Williams and Aaron Lewis. The DPP’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Tekiyah Jorsling, and Nali­ni Jag­nar­ine.