Derek Achong

A San Juan man, serv­ing a four- year sen­tence for ab­duct­ing and rob­bing a taxi dri­ver and his pas­sen­ger, has lost his ap­peal over his con­vic­tion. 

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Wednes­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon, Prakash Moo­sai and Mal­colm Holdip dis­missed Kevin Lo­gan's ap­peal. 

The ap­peal pan­el agreed with Lo­gan's at­tor­neys that the judge, who presided over his tri­al in 2019, made an er­ror in iden­ti­fy­ing in­con­sis­ten­cies in the ev­i­dence of two po­lice of­fi­cers over Lo­gan's ar­rest and sub­se­quent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by the pas­sen­ger. 

How­ev­er, the judges ruled that the er­ror was not fa­tal to the State's case against Lo­gan as there was oth­er ev­i­dence for the ju­ry to ar­rive at the in­escapable con­clu­sion that Lo­gan was in­volved in the rob­bery. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the rob­bery oc­curred on Jan­u­ary 21, 2007. 

The dri­ver of the taxi, who plied his car for hire be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Princes Town, left Li­brary Cor­ner with a fe­male pas­sen­ger in the front seat and two male pas­sen­gers in the back seat. 

When the car got to Man­a­ham­bre Road, the back seat pas­sen­gers an­nounced a hold-up and robbed the pas­sen­ger and the dri­ver of their wal­lets and cell­phones. 

The men or­dered the dri­ver to turn the ve­hi­cle around and he com­plied. 

How­ev­er, while dri­ving past the Ste Made­line Po­lice Sta­tion the dri­ver pulled in­to the car park and be­gan honk­ing the horn. 

The men got out of the car and ran away in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. They were then al­leged­ly ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers at the po­lice sta­tion who re­spond­ed. 

In pros­e­cut­ing the case, the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) led the ev­i­dence of a Ch­agua­nas taxi dri­ver, who claimed to have been robbed by Lo­gan days be­fore the in­ci­dent in south Trinidad. 

Lo­gan tes­ti­fied in his de­fence and claimed that on the day of the San Fer­nan­do rob­bery he was ar­rest­ed in San Juan in re­la­tion to the oth­er rob­bery, which he al­so de­nied com­mit­ting. 

He claimed that he was brought to the po­lice sta­tion around the same time of rob­bery and was mis­tak­en­ly im­pli­cat­ed. 

He was slapped with two kid­nap­ping charges, one rob­bery with ag­gra­va­tion and one for us­ing an im­i­ta­tion firearm in the fur­ther­ance of a rob­bery. 

As part of its de­ci­sion in the ap­peal, the pan­el af­firmed the four year sen­tences he re­ceived for kid­nap­ping and rob­bery and the two year sen­tence he re­ceived for pos­ses­sion of the im­i­ta­tion firearm.

Lo­gan was rep­re­sent­ed by Can­dace Nan­ton and Deli­cia Hel­wig-Robert­son of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers De­part­ment, while Tra­vers Sinanan and Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal rep­re­sent­ed the State.