sto­ries by DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A de­ci­sion by the lo­cal courts to stop the pros­e­cu­tion of three men ac­cused of com­mit­ting a triple mur­der has been over­turned by the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment, yes­ter­day morn­ing, five Law Lords of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil ruled that a High Court Judge and two out of three judges of the Court of Ap­peal, in­clud­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, were wrong to al­low the trio to pur­sue the case let alone up­hold it.

La­dy Sue Carr, who de­liv­ered the Board’s judg­ment, said, “As the au­thor­i­ties con­firm, oc­ca­sions when it is ap­pro­pri­ate to ju­di­cial­ly re­view a pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al de­ci­sion whether to (con­tin­ue to) pros­e­cute are ex­treme­ly rare.

“In the present case, there was un­war­rant­ed in­ter­fer­ence by a civ­il court of con­cur­rent ju­ris­dic­tion with on­go­ing pro­ceed­ings in a crim­i­nal court,” she added.

The le­gal vic­to­ry for the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) set an im­por­tant prece­dent as it helped de­fine the pa­ra­me­ters for pur­su­ing civ­il law­suits chal­leng­ing on­go­ing crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions.

The out­come means that DPP Roger Gas­pard, SC, has to de­cide whether two of the three men should be re­ar­rest­ed and tried for the crime as one died while their case was still pend­ing.

The case, which led to the ap­peal, was brought by Chris Durham, Ian Sandy, and De­on Cal­liste.

Durham, Sandy and Cal­liste were charged with mur­der­ing 15-year-old Mubarak Calder, Men­tie Mu­rai, 19, and Kevon St Louis dur­ing a shoot­ing at a bot­tle fac­to­ry at Fac­to­ry Road in Diego Mar­tin on April 21, 2009.

The State’s main wit­ness against the trio was O’Neil Ben­jamin, who claimed to have wit­nessed the mur­ders and im­pli­cat­ed them.

How­ev­er, when the trio’s tri­al was about to com­mence in 2019, Ben­jamin ad­mit­ted to pros­e­cu­tors that he lied about the trio’s in­volve­ment dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry of the case and in­di­cat­ed that he was will­ing to re­peat the fab­ri­cat­ed ev­i­dence.

The trio filed the civ­il law­suit af­ter DPP Gas­pard re­fused to dis­con­tin­ue the case against them based on the ad­mis­sion.

In June 2019, High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams up­held their nov­el law­suit as she ruled that the DPP’s fail­ure to dis­con­tin­ue the charges was un­rea­son­able, im­prop­er and un­fair.

The trio was freed fol­low­ing the out­come. While wait­ing for the Ap­peal Court to weigh in on the case, Durham slipped and fell in­to a riv­er in Diego Mar­tin while search­ing for his miss­ing pet par­rot in Oc­to­ber 2020.

In Jan­u­ary 2022, the Ap­peal Court de­liv­ered a ma­jor­i­ty rul­ing in which CJ Archie and Ap­pel­late Judge Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar agreed with Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams’ find­ings.

Jus­tice Nolan Bereaux de­liv­ered a dis­sent­ing judg­ment in which he claimed his col­leagues were “pal­pa­bly” wrong in in­ter­ven­ing in the case.

La­dy Carr and her col­leagues ruled that Jus­tice Bereaux was cor­rect in his analy­sis.

They ruled that the trio should have on­ly been al­lowed to pur­sue the ju­di­cial re­view case if they did not have any oth­er form of re­dress in re­la­tion to Ben­jamin’s ad­mis­sion.

They point­ed out that they could have sought a stay of the pro­ceed­ings from the judge as­signed to pre­side over their tri­al.

The Board al­so con­clud­ed that even if they did not have the al­ter­na­tive rem­e­dy, Gas­pard’s de­ci­sion to al­low the tri­al to pro­ceed, de­spite Ben­jamin’s con­trary claims, could not be fault­ed.

“The short an­swer to this is sim­ply that the DPP was un­der no oblig­a­tion to pro­vide any rea­sons for his pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al de­ci­sion,” La­dy Carr said.

She point­ed out that any per­ceived un­rea­son­able­ness and un­fair­ness were not enough to amount to an ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stance to war­rant the de­ci­sions of the lo­cal courts.

The trio was rep­re­sent­ed by Richard Clay­ton, KC, Ger­ald Ramdeen, Wayne Sturge, and Dayadai Har­ri­paul. The DPP’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Ke­ston Mc­Quilkin, and Pierre Rud­der.