Derek Achong

Diego Mar­tin res­i­dent Ak­ili Charles will be re­mem­bered by many peo­ple for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. To his moth­er, he was the last of her three chil­dren and was al­ways kind and lov­ing. To his friends, he was loy­al, in­tel­li­gent, and out­spo­ken. 

And to per­sons ac­cused of mur­der seek­ing free­dom be­fore tri­al, many of whom nev­er met him, his name and the land­mark law­suit to which it is at­tached, will al­ways have to be cit­ed in their bail ap­pli­ca­tions. Charles, 42, a for­mer mur­der ac­cused, was shot dead out­side his home at Covi­gne Road, Diego Mar­tin, on Sat­ur­day night. 

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 10 pm, Charles was lim­ing with two friends near his front gate when he was at­tacked by gun­men, who came on foot and shot him sev­er­al times be­fore run­ning away. His friends es­caped. Charles’ friends and rel­a­tives in­clud­ing his 15-year-old daugh­ter rushed to his side and un­suc­cess­ful­ly at­tempt­ed to re­sus­ci­tate him. He was pro­nounced dead on the scene by a Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer (DMO).  Homi­cide de­tec­tives had not es­tab­lished a mo­tive for Charles’ mur­der, up to late yes­ter­day, but po­lice sources said they are con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he was at­tacked af­ter he re­fused to join a gang in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Charles’ mur­der came less than three days af­ter the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil up­held his land­mark case over the abil­i­ty of judges to con­sid­er bail for per­sons charged with mur­der. 

The con­sti­tu­tion­al case, which ef­fec­tive­ly changed the coun­try’s al­most cen­tu­ry-long stance on the is­sue, was brought on Charles’ be­half af­ter he and five neigh­bours were freed of mur­der­ing a fel­low res­i­dent af­ter spend­ing al­most nine years on re­mand in May 2019. 

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, yes­ter­day, Charles’ 73-year-old moth­er Meli­na Charles said that since be­ing re­leased her son, a prac­tis­ing Bud­dhist at­tempt­ed to keep him­self away from trou­ble to avoid re­turn­ing to prison. 

She de­scribed her son as gen­er­ous as she not­ed that he was al­ways help­ing peo­ple in­clud­ing through his now-fa­mous case. 

“Ak­ili was a pray­ing child and he would give you his last. If you ask him for some­thing and it was his last, he would not save it for him­self, he would give it to you,” she said. “Ak­ili was a very car­ing fel­la, he was full of love and there is so much I can say about Ak­ili but I just can’t get it off my head,” she said.  She said she could not think of a rea­son for her son to be tar­get­ed. 

“Life is cause and ef­fect so those who took my son’s life have no guar­an­tee that theirs’ will con­tin­ue. Life is cause and ef­fect and there is kar­ma,” she said.  When a news team vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day morn­ing, dozens of res­i­dents were in and around Charles’ home mourn­ing his death.  Among the mourn­ers was Ka­reem Gomez, one of Charles’ five friends, with whom he was joint­ly charged with mur­der for al­most a decade. “I can’t re­al­ly say noth­ing bad about him, al­though two of us was not full hun­dred,” he said. Gomez said that like Charles he was at­tempt­ing to read­just to life out­side prison and im­prove their re­la­tion­ships with rel­a­tives in­clud­ing their chil­dren.  How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted the tran­si­tion has been tough. 

“We did re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes in jail but when we come out what is there for we? I can’t get no work be­cause I spend nine years in jail,” Gomez said. Gomez, who claimed to have sur­vived two shoot­ing at­tempts on his life since his re­lease, not­ed that Charles was the sec­ond of his co-ac­cused to be mur­dered since they were freed. 

In No­vem­ber, last year, Chic­ki Por­tillo was shot dead while work­ing on a job site in the com­mu­ni­ty. 

He said that af­ter Charles was killed he re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls from friends still on re­mand in prison, who were sad­dened and an­gered by what tran­spired con­sid­er­ing the po­ten­tial im­pact of Charles’ case on them. 

“Men don’t like what go on. This was the man who fight for a man on mur­der to get bail,” he said, as he not­ed that many in­no­cent per­sons on re­mand for sev­er­al years would ben­e­fit from the case. 

Gomez not­ed that de­spite Charles and Por­tillo’s deaths, he and his re­main­ing co-ac­cused, or “char­gies” as he re­ferred to them, would con­tin­ue their ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit for com­pen­sa­tion from the State based on what tran­spired in their case.  

“That is a plus for the sys­tem be­cause that is one less that they have to pay. But they have to pay we. We can’t make all that jail for some­thing we didn’t do,” he said.

His­to­ry of Charles’ case

Charles, Por­tillo, Gomez, Levi Joseph, Is­rael “Arnold” Lara, and An­ton Cam­bridge were charged with mur­der­ing Rus­sell An­toine on May 13, 2010.

An­toine, 27, was walk­ing along Up­per Ceme­tery Street, Diego Mar­tin, when he was shot sev­er­al times. An­toine’s friends Mar­cus and Joseph Spring were wound­ed in the in­ci­dent and the group was al­so charged with shoot­ing them with in­tent to cause them griev­ous bod­i­ly harm. 

The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in the case went on for al­most nine years and had reached an ad­vanced stage when then chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar took up a pro­mo­tion as a High Court Judge in April 2017. Charles and his co-ac­cused caused what was de­scribed as a near-ri­ot at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate’s Court when Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s suc­ces­sor Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle first sug­gest­ed that their pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry may have to be restart­ed. 

The in­quiry was put on hold while a law­suit from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, over what pro­ce­dure should be adopt­ed in sit­u­a­tions where ju­di­cial of­fi­cers leave their of­fice with part-heard cas­es still pend­ing, was be­ing pur­sued. 

In Jan­u­ary 2019, High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in even­tu­al­ly ruled that such cas­es had to be restart­ed.

Charles and his neigh­bours’ case was then restart­ed and com­plet­ed with­in four months. All six men were freed of the charges as Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle ruled that the State failed to present suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sus­tain the charge. 

Last year, Charles was award­ed al­most $300,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for the breach­es of his rights due to the de­lay. 

Charles’ law­suit over bail be­ing con­sid­ered for per­sons ac­cused of mur­der was ini­tial­ly dis­missed by a High Court Judge be­fore be­ing up­held by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and two of his col­leagues from the Court of Ap­peal in Feb­ru­ary.  On Thurs­day, five Law Lords of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil re­ject­ed all the grounds raised by the AG’s Of­fice in its ap­peal over the Ap­peal Court’s rul­ing on the is­sue. 

Lord Nicholas Ham­blen, who de­liv­ered the board’s de­ci­sion, ruled that al­though the Bail Act was passed by a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty of Par­lia­ment in 1994, it did not rea­son­ably jus­ti­fy the in­fringe­ment of cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in re­la­tion to ap­ply­ing for bail. 

“Bear­ing in mind that less in­tru­sive mea­sures could have been used, the Board nev­er­the­less con­sid­ers that in all the cir­cum­stances of the present case the in­ter­est of the com­mu­ni­ty as ex­pressed through the will of Par­lia­ment is out­weighed by the very se­vere con­se­quences of the im­po­si­tion of a blan­ket pro­hi­bi­tion of bail and that a fair bal­ance has not been struck,” Lord Ham­blen said.  He said the dis-pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of the blan­ket pro­hi­bi­tion against con­sid­er­ing bail for mur­der was es­pe­cial­ly high­light­ed by what tran­spired in Charles’ case.

“That is vivid­ly il­lus­trat­ed by the facts of the present case in which it was ul­ti­mate­ly found that the re­spon­dent had no case to an­swer - in the mean­while he spent near­ly eight and a half years in cus­tody,” Lord Ham­blen said. 

Le­gal team mourns

In a press re­lease is­sued late Sun­day, Charles’ lawyers Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Ganesh Sa­roop, and Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al said they were sad­dened up­on learn­ing of his mur­der. “Ak­ili was an ex­tra­or­di­nary young man with great po­ten­tial who gen­uine­ly want­ed a bet­ter life. It would be wrong to as­sume that he was just an­oth­er “bad boy” who was on the wrong side of the law,” they said.