Derek Achong

A To­ba­go man, ac­cused of mur­der, has been grant­ed per­mis­sion to pur­sue a law­suit against the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er over de­lays in sub­mit­ting his case file to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

On Tues­day, High Court Judge Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well grant­ed leave to Davril Williams to pur­sue a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit over the de­lay which he claims af­fect­ed his abil­i­ty to ap­ply for bail.

In his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Williams' lawyers Ar­den Williams and Mari­ah Ram­rat­tan claimed that their client, who was em­ployed as a steel ben­der with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), was first ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the mur­der of Emero Baynes on Oc­to­ber 3, last year.

Baynes, 28, who had been an em­ploy­ee of the T&T In­ter-Is­land Trans­port Com­pa­ny, as­signed to the APT James fer­ry, was shot dead be­hind the wheel of his car at Ma­son Hall in Sep­tem­ber, last year.

He was held by homi­cide de­tec­tives for three days be­fore be­ing re­leased with­out be­ing charged.

A lit­tle over a month lat­er, he was re­ar­rest­ed and joint­ly charged with Justin Abra­ham for Baynes' mur­der and pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion.

In De­cem­ber, last year, Williams' lawyers ap­plied for bail for him un­der a land­mark Court of Ap­peal judg­ment which gave judges the dis­cre­tion to con­sid­er bail for per­sons ac­cused of mur­der.

How­ev­er, dur­ing sev­er­al hear­ings of the ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore a High Court Judge, State pros­e­cu­tors from the DPP's Of­fice in­di­cat­ed that they could not re­spond as they were yet to re­ceive the case file from homi­cide de­tec­tives.

They ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments when his crim­i­nal case came up for hear­ing in the Scar­bor­ough Mag­is­trates' Court.

In his law­suit, Williams' lawyers are con­tend­ing that the re­peat­ed de­lays breached his fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Through the law­suit, Williams is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the de­lay as well as an or­der com­pelling the file trans­fer. He is al­so seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the al­leged breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

The case has been as­signed to Jus­tice Christo­pher Sieuc­hand, who will sched­ule a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence.

In a let­ter sent to Williams' lawyers af­ter the hear­ing, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) le­gal of­fi­cer Keron Ramkhal­whan said the file had been de­liv­ered to the DPP's Of­fice.

Not­ing that the trans­fer ef­fec­tive­ly ren­dered the law­suit aca­d­e­m­ic, Ramkhal­whan ques­tioned whether he still wished to pur­sue it.

"It is on that ba­sis we write to en­quire about your po­si­tion as it re­lates to the pro­gres­sion of this mat­ter in or­der to prop­er­ly ad­vise our client," he said.

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er's Of­fice is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Yohann Niles, Delise Springer, and Tson­da Gayle.