JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Guilty as charged!

by

1463 days ago
20210723

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Two men con­vict­ed of bru­tal­ly mur­der­ing six-year-old Sean Luke, 15 years ago, can still pos­si­bly be re­leased from prison even­tu­al­ly. 

Af­ter con­vict­ing Akeel Mitchell and Richard Cha­too of the heinous crime at the end of their vir­tu­al judge-alone tri­al yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds sought to pre-empt pos­si­ble calls from the mem­bers of the pub­lic for the duo to face the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der. 

Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds not­ed that as Mitchell and Cha­too were mi­nors at the time of Luke’s mur­der, they can­not face the death penal­ty that is hand­ed down to adult of­fend­ers. 

“The law is clear. Stop clam­our­ing for it,” Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds said. 

Mitchell and Cha­too will be held in prison at the court’s plea­sure and will have their sen­tences re­viewed pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly af­ter serv­ing a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence, which is ex­pect­ed to be set af­ter sub­mis­sions from their at­tor­neys and pros­e­cu­tors are pre­sent­ed dur­ing a hear­ing card­ed for Au­gust 23. 

The time they spent on re­mand be­fore be­ing con­vict­ed will al­so go to­wards their sen­tence. In the event that a judge, pre­sid­ing over their fu­ture sen­tence re­views, is sat­is­fied that they have been re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed and are fit to re­turn to so­ci­ety, they may be re­leased.  

In her judge­ment, which took over three hours to be de­liv­ered oral­ly and was wit­nessed by over 1,500 cit­i­zens, who made use of a live stream pro­vid­ed by the Ju­di­cia­ry, Ram­suamir-Hinds said she was sat­is­fied that cir­cum­stan­tial ev­i­dence in the case proved that the duo had com­mit­ted the crime be­yond a rea­son­able doubt. 

“All the ev­i­dence leads to one in­escapable con­clu­sion,” Ram­sumair-Hinds said, be­fore de­liv­er­ing her in­di­vid­ual ver­dicts for Mitchell and Cha­too. 

Luke, of Hen­ry Street, Or­ange Val­ley Road in Cou­va, went miss­ing on the evening of March 26, 2006 and his de­com­pos­ing body was found two days lat­er. An au­top­sy re­vealed that he died from in­ter­nal in­juries and bleed­ing aris­ing out of be­ing sodomised with sug­ar­cane stalk.

Cha­too, who was 16 years old at the time, and 13-year-old Mitchell, who is the step­son of Cha­too’s broth­er, were charged with the crime. 

Weigh­ing the ev­i­dence

Dur­ing the tri­al, State pros­e­cu­tors led the ev­i­dence of teenagers Avinash Ba­boolal and Arvis Pradeep, who claimed that Cha­too had in­vit­ed Luke to ac­com­pa­ny them on a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion. Both Ba­boolal and Pradeep claimed that they saw Luke, Cha­too and Mitchell en­ter an aban­doned sug­ar­cane field, where Luke’s body was even­tu­al­ly found, with on­ly Cha­too and Mitchell emerg­ing. How­ev­er, while Ba­boolal claimed that they en­tered the field on their way to the riv­er, Pradeep claimed the di­ver­sion came when they were re­turn­ing. Both claimed that they heard a strange noise em­a­nat­ing from the area but nei­ther went in to in­ves­ti­gate. 

In her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds said she be­lieved Ba­boolal but not Pradeep, as his (Pradeep) ev­i­dence was rid­dled with in­con­sis­ten­cies and bizarre state­ments. 

“Red flags were at full mast when he (Pradeep) be­gun his ev­i­dence,” Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds said. 

In her judge­ment, Ram­sumair-Hinds said she con­sid­ered and dis­re­gard­ed a video-record­ed con­fes­sion state­ment, in which Cha­too im­pli­cat­ed him­self and Mitchell. 

In the record­ing, Cha­too claimed that Mitchell, who was spend­ing time at his home, re­quest­ed that he (Mitchell) have sex with him. Ac­cord­ing to Cha­too, af­ter he re­fused, he re­luc­tant­ly agreed to Mitchell’s re­quest to in­tro­duce him to Luke, who was his (Cha­too) neigh­bour. Cha­too claimed that he mere­ly held Luke’s hands and cov­ered his mouth as Mitchell raped him and sodomised him with the sug­ar­cane stalk. 

How­ev­er, Cha­too elect­ed to tes­ti­fy in his de­fence dur­ing the tri­al and claimed that he fab­ri­cat­ed the con­fes­sion, as he was threat­ened and co­erced by homi­cide de­tec­tives. Cha­too de­nied any wrong­do­ing and claimed that Mitchell did not ac­com­pa­ny the group on the fish­ing trip. He al­so sought to sug­gest that Ba­boolal may have been the per­pe­tra­tor. 

Ram­sumair-Hinds not­ed that Cha­too’s ini­tial con­fes­sion was not re­li­able, as he sought to down­play his in­volve­ment. She re­ject­ed his sub­se­quent claims of po­lice mis­con­duct, as she ruled that the homi­cide de­tec­tives in the case had pro­vid­ed clear and co­gent ev­i­dence. Ram­sumair-Hinds al­so re­peat­ed­ly re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions from the duo and their at­tor­neys that Ba­boolal was in­volved. 

“I re­main sure on the ev­i­dence that Avinash Ba­boolal was not in­volved,” she said, as she not­ed she did not think Cha­too was be­ing a truth­ful wit­ness in the tri­al. 

Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds al­so point­ed to the DNA ev­i­dence col­lect­ed in the case, which showed that Mitchell’s se­men was found on Luke’s dis­card­ed un­der­wear. A par­tial DNA pro­file, not linked to Cha­too, was found on the sug­ar­cane stalk and on anal swabs tak­en dur­ing Luke’s au­top­sy. 

While Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds said she was sat­is­fied with the ev­i­dence of the State’s DNA ex­pert Dr Mau­rice Aboud, she ex­pressed con­cern over the fact that ev­i­dence col­lect­ed dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was on­ly sent of DNA test­ing at Aboud’s pri­vate lab at the start of the case. 

She not­ed that DNA test­ing was pos­si­ble at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James un­til 2018, when the cen­tre’s equip­ment was not op­er­a­tional due to a lack of cal­i­bra­tion. 

“I find that un­ac­cept­able,” Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds said, as she not­ed that some sam­ples col­lect­ed had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed over the lengthy pe­ri­od. 

As a sec­ondary is­sue in the case, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds had to con­sid­er whether a le­gal prin­ci­ple over the men­tal ca­pac­i­ty of a child un­der 14 to have crim­i­nal in­tent ap­plied to Mitchell. She said it was re­butted, as Mitchell was weeks short of his 14th birth­day and based on the ev­i­dence, was aware that his ac­tions were wrong as he sought to give him­self a false al­i­bi by wait­ing at Luke’s home and speak­ing to his moth­er be­fore the oth­er chil­dren re­turned. 

“He (Mitchell) pushed the cane stalk un­til there was nowhere else to go,” she said.  

Mitchell was rep­re­sent­ed by Mario Mer­ritt, Ran­dall Raphael and Kir­by Joseph, while Evans Welch, Kel­ston Pope and Gabriel Her­nan­dez rep­re­sent­ed Cha­too. Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal, An­ju Bho­la and Sophia Sandy-Smith pros­e­cut­ed the case. 


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored