Derek Achong

Two Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) stu­dents have been freed of charges aris­ing out of a protest over se­cu­ri­ty at the in­sti­tu­tion’s St Au­gus­tine cam­pus in 2018. 

Nathanael John and Bri­an Richards were freed of charges for re­sist­ing ar­rest and ob­struct­ing po­lice of­fi­cers in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing of their case be­fore Mag­is­trate Sherene Mur­ray-Bai­ley yes­ter­day. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that when the case was called the pros­e­cut­ing State at­tor­ney in­di­cat­ed that the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic (DPP) would dis­con­tin­ue the charges against Richards but not John. 

John’s le­gal team re­quest­ed that the tri­al be­gin dur­ing the vir­tu­al hear­ing un­der the prac­tice di­rec­tions is­sued by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie for court hear­ings dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

How­ev­er, the pros­e­cu­tors asked for it to be ad­journed so the tri­al could take place in a court­room at the Tu­na­puna Mag­is­trate’s Court. 

Af­ter Mur­ray-Bai­ley up­held John’s sub­mis­sions and start­ed the case, the DPP’s Of­fice did not lead the ev­i­dence of any its wit­ness­es. 

At­tor­ney Kei­th Scot­land, who was part of John’s le­gal team, then pre­sent­ed a no-case sub­mis­sion in which he point­ed out there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to war­rant the charge. Scot­land’s sub­mis­sion was up­held and the charges were dis­missed. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, John said he was pleased by the out­come but com­plained over how the case was pros­e­cut­ed. 

“It has been an emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly drain­ing two years...I don’t think jus­tice was served,” John said, as he not­ed the case was de­layed sev­er­al times af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers failed to at­tend hear­ings. 

Say­ing he and his co-ac­cused made 10 court ap­pear­ances be­fore the out­come, John said: “Many times I had to post­pone dif­fer­ent events I had to do and even class­es. It was frus­trat­ing.” 

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the duo was ar­rest­ed in Oc­to­ber 2018 while par­tic­i­pat­ing in a protest at the south­ern en­trance to UWI’s cam­pus. They were ac­cused of block­ing of­fi­cers from clear­ing a crowd of pro­test­ers who blocked the gate from ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic. The stu­dent protest was sparked by an in­ci­dent in which a fe­male stu­dent was at­tacked by an in­trud­er and al­most raped. 

The duo was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by John Je­re­mie, SC, Prakash Ra­mad­har, Bri­an Baig and Keisha Kidd-Han­ni­bal.