A 58-year-old woman will ap­pear in a mag­is­trate court on No­vem­ber 29, ac­cused of throw­ing mis­siles in Kingstown on Au­gust 5, 2021 that co­in­cid­ed with the day Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Ralph Gon­salves was struck in the head dur­ing a protest march in the cap­i­tal.

Mag­is­trate John Bal­lah in set­ting the date for the tri­al of An­na­may Lewis, told pros­e­cu­tor act­ing Cor­po­ral of Po­lice Cor­lene Samuel and de­fence coun­sel Kay Bac­chus-Bap­tiste and Is­rael Bruce that he is “an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty hit­ter” and would dis­miss the case if the pros­e­cu­tion is not ready.

He al­so warned that if the pros­e­cu­tion is ready and the de­fence is not or is ab­sent, he would pro­ceed with the tri­al.

The mat­ter, which has been ad­journed a num­ber of times over the last two years, was set for tri­al on Mon­day, but when it was called, Samuel told the court that while the pros­e­cu­tion was pre­pared to start the tri­al, one of its wit­ness­es, a po­lice of­fi­cer, was at the Bar­ba­dos-based Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) ask­ing the court to take his ev­i­dence by video link.

“Why wasn’t the ap­pli­ca­tion made long be­fore? This is a 2021 mat­ter,” the mag­is­trate re­spond­ed.

But the pros­e­cu­tor told the court that that she had been in­formed very late that the of­fi­cer was out of state, in­form­ing the court that the pros­e­cu­tion in­tends to call four wit­ness­es in­clud­ing the po­lice of­fi­cer, who is the in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ist at the RSS.

How­ev­er, Bac­chus-Bap­tiste told the court that she did not be­lieve that the de­fence was in a po­si­tion to start the mat­ter, as she was yet to re­ceive the “so-called war­rant” for Lewis’ ar­rest. The lawyer said she had ap­plied for dis­clo­sure of the doc­u­ment a year ear­li­er.

Bac­chus-Bap­tiste said she was not pre­pared to start the tri­al un­less she had seen the war­rant.

“This is a not a case that you can ar­rest with­out a war­rant,” Bac­chus-Bap­tiste said.

How­ev­er, the mag­is­trate, who took up his post in Ju­ly, re­plac­ing for­mer Se­nior Mag­is­trate Rick­ie Bur­nett, said the notes be­fore him said noth­ing about an ap­pli­ca­tion for dis­clo­sure of a war­rant.

Bal­lah or­dered that all doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the case be dis­closed.

Bac­chus-Bap­tiste told the court that there is al­so a CCTV footage that she has not had sight of, even as she not­ed that there was dis­clo­sure since Sep­tem­ber 2021.

The mag­is­trate then said he was go­ing to give the mat­ter a fi­nal ad­journ­ment.

“… every­body should know me by now. When I say fi­nal, I mean fi­nal,” he said, adding that he was go­ing to give a long enough ad­journ­ment.

“And if no­body has their house in or­der I am go­ing to dis­miss the mat­ter,” Bal­lah said, adding “I am an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty hit­ter. If the pros­e­cu­tor is ready to pro­ceed and coun­sel is not here, I am pro­ceed­ing. If the pros­e­cu­tor is not ready and coun­sel is here and ready, I am dis­miss­ing it."

“So, when I say every­body, coun­sel, I mean every­body. I am an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty hit­ter. Peo­ple need to un­der­stand that when I come here, I come here to give jus­tice. And when I give am­ple no­tice of some­thing, I have giv­en am­ple no­tice so I mean it. On the next oc­ca­sion, all par­ties should have their house in or­der.”

Bac­chus-Bap­tiste told the court that she would have to ac­cept the date blind­ly as she did not have her di­ary with her and did not know if she had a High Court mat­ter on that date.

But the mag­is­trate told the lawyer that if the de­fence coun­sel are to ap­pear be­fore the High Court on that date, they must have a com­pe­tent re­place­ment to rep­re­sent Lewis.

Lewis came to na­tion­al at­ten­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2021 af­ter she was charged with wound­ing the prime min­is­ter dur­ing a protest in Kingstown on Au­gust 5, 2021.

How­ev­er, that charge was with­drawn on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2021.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vin­cent, Aug 30, CMC –

CMC/kc/ir/2023