Senior Reporter
derek.achong@guardian.co.tt
Convicted murderer Chuck Attin will have to serve almost 23 more years in prison before he can be released.
Having already served over three decades in prison after being convicted of murdering two women in a home invasion when he was a teenager in 1994, Attin was this week sentenced for raping one of the victims’ maid before committing the heinous killings.
In 1997, Attin and Noel Seepersad were convicted of murdering 23-year-old Candice Scott and 31-year-old Karen Sa Gomes.
Both women were brutally killed during a home invasion at Scott’s home in Westmoorings on July 11, 1994.
The duo sexually assaulted Scott’s maid, who was at home with her baby and murdered the women when they came home later that day. The baby and the maid survived.
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, did not face the death penalty as he was a minor.
He 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 a 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.
Another review took place in 2023, but it resulted in the same outcome, meaning that Attin had already served in excess of his minimum term.
The duo were prosecuted separately for the women’s murders and for the sexual offences against the maid, although the crimes arose out of the same incident.
Attin recently pleaded guilty to rape, serious indecency and buggery, before Justice Kathy-Ann Waterman-Latchoo.
Justice Waterman-Latchoo decided on a 26-year and eight-month sentence for rape, and one year and four months for the two other offences.
Attin’s lawyers, Michelle Ali and Shuzvon Ramdass of the Public Defenders’ Department (PDD), asked for his sentences to run concurrently to his sentence for the women’s murders, meaning he would have completed them already.
They claimed that such would have applied if Attin and his co-accused were tried for the offences alongside the women’s murders or if they were tried separately decades ago.
Justice Waterman-Latchoo disagreed as she ruled that the sentences should run consecutively.
She did deduct the little over three years he spent on remand before going on trial in 1997, meaning that he has already served the sentences for serious indecency and buggery and has a little over 22 years left to complete the sentence for rape.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) was represented by Shervon Noriega.
