Derek Achong
Senior Reporter
derek.achong@guardian.co.tt
A man has been cleared of charges arising from the robbery of a San Fernando family during a home invasion in 2011.
Ijah Charles was found not guilty of two charges of robbery with aggravation and one charge of robbery with violence after the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) offered no evidence against him at the start of his judge-alone trial before Justice Trevor Jones yesterday.
Charles had been accused of committing the offences during an incident on August 15, 2011. The four alleged victims were at a home in Friendship Village, Cross Crossing, San Fernando, when three men, two of whom were armed with a gun and a cutlass, entered the property.
The intruders allegedly robbed the family of two laptops, a quantity of cash and jewellery before escaping in one of the victims’ Nissan B13 motor vehicles.
Charles was arrested and charged after he was allegedly identified by the victims during an identification parade. He was granted bail and later committed to stand trial following a preliminary inquiry before a magistrate.
The indictment against Charles was filed by the DPP’s Office in July 2017, but it took several years before the matter was listed for trial.
While preparing for the trial late last month, Charles’ attorneys, Darryl Douglas and Ayanna Norville-Modeste of the Public Defenders’ Department (PDD), applied to have the identification evidence excluded. They argued that the identification parade, which provided the only evidence linking their client to the crime, had been unfairly conducted.
State prosecutors Solange Devenish and Tammy Cato agreed with the defence’s assessment of the evidence, and the application was upheld. When the matter came up for hearing at the Hall of Justice in Port-of-Spain yesterday, Charles was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to the charges before prosecutors formally offered no evidence against him.
Based on that concession, Justice Jones entered not guilty verdicts on all three charges and discharged Charles.
