Derek Achong

A High Court judge over­see­ing the sen­tence re­view of a man, con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing two women when he was a teenag­er in 1994, has re­quest­ed a se­ries of re­ports from prison au­thor­i­ties to de­ter­mine if he is now fit for re­lease.

High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas is­sued a se­ries of or­ders for the re­ports as he host­ed a brief vir­tu­al hear­ing of Chuck At­tin’s case, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In one of the re­ports, the Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Gold­en Grove State Prison is to give a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of At­tin’s dis­ci­pline and gen­er­al de­port­ment at the prison.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas al­so re­quest­ed a re­port from the prison’s chap­lain to de­ter­mine whether At­tin had been re­cep­tive to re­li­gious teach­ing and in­struc­tion that was of­fered dur­ing his stint at the fa­cil­i­ty.

He al­so re­quest­ed a re­port on At­tin’s phys­i­cal health and or­dered that he be sent for a psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment to de­ter­mine his cur­rent men­tal state and his prog­no­sis for the fu­ture.

The re­ports are to be pre­pared and sub­mit­ted by March 15, with Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas ex­pect­ed to host an­oth­er hear­ing on March 23.

In 1997, At­tin and Noel Seep­er­sad were con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing 23-year-old Can­dice Scott and Karen Sa Gomes, 31, who were killed at Scott’s home in West­moor­ings on Ju­ly 11, 1994.

Seep­er­sad was giv­en the death penal­ty but his sen­tence was lat­er com­mut­ed to life im­pris­on­ment.

At­tin, who was 16 years old at the time of the dou­ble mur­der, was held at the court’s plea­sure and giv­en a manda­to­ry min­i­mum term of 25 years in prison be­fore he could be con­sid­ered for re­lease.

At­tin ap­pealed the sen­tence but the Court of Ap­peal ruled that it was not ex­ces­sive con­sid­er­ing the bru­tal­i­ty of his crime.

Dur­ing his last sen­tence re­view in 2015, Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas ruled that At­tin was not yet fit to be re­leased.

“Clear­ly you have changed but the re­al ques­tion is by how much. By re­leas­ing a man with no life skills who en­gaged in a se­ri­ous crime is not some­thing any court can take light­ly,” St Clair-Dou­glas said at the time.

He ad­vised At­tin to en­rol in pro­grammes while in prison to make it eas­i­er to rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety up­on his even­tu­al re­lease.

At the time of his last re­view, At­tin, now 42, had al­most three years left to com­plete his min­i­mum sen­tence. He has now ex­ceed­ed it.

At­tin was rep­re­sent­ed by Daniel Khan and Aris­sa Ma­haraj, while Veon­na Neale-Munroe rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).