Derek Achong

Af­ter eight years of re­peat­ed de­lays and un­ex­pect­ed hin­drances, a dozen men will to­day go on tri­al for the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of cen­tral busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man.A 12-mem­ber ju­ry con­sist­ed of eight men and four women sup­port­ed by six al­ter­nates are ex­pect­ed to gath­er at the Hall of Jus­tice around 9 am, when the State will open the pros­e­cu­tion's case.A to­tal of 74 wit­ness­es are sched­uled to tes­ti­fy against the ac­cused and the tri­al is ex­pect­ed to last as long as a year to com­plete.

Se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at the court is ex­pect­ed to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased for the high pro­file tri­al.Be­sides nor­mal se­cu­ri­ty scans at the en­trance to the court, mem­bers of the pub­lic will al­so have to clear a sec­ondary se­cu­ri­ty check point erect­ed out­side the en­trance to the Sec­ond and Third As­sizes.Vis­i­tors will have to lodge their cell­phones with se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, be­fore pass­ing through a met­al de­tec­tor at the en­trance to the ad­join­ing court­rooms.

The two rooms, out­fit­ted with video con­fer­enc­ing equip­ment, are be­ing used for the tri­al to ac­com­mo­date the large num­ber of at­tor­neys who are de­fend­ing the 12 mur­der ac­cused.The tri­al had been blight­ed with de­lays in the past as many of the ac­cused men had dif­fi­cul­ties in se­cur­ing le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, be­fore the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty in­ter­vened in 2012 to im­ple­ment a spe­cial Cab­i­net-ap­proved pay­ment plan to lure de­fence at­tor­neys in­to the tri­al.

Ju­ry se­lec­tion be­gan in May, last year, with more than 400 peo­ple be­ing sum­moned as po­ten­tial ju­rors. The tri­al could not com­mence af­ter the month-long ju­ry se­lec­tion process as de­fence at­tor­neys were en­gaged in pre-tri­al le­gal ar­gu­ments.

About the case

Naipaul-Cool­man, 52, the for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive of su­per­mar­ket chain Naipaul's Xtra Foods was kid­napped from her home at Radix Road, Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas on De­cem­ber 19, 2006. Her kid­nap­pers de­mand­ed a $3 mil­lion ran­som was de­mand­ed for her re­lease. Her fam­i­ly paid a por­tion, how­ev­er, she was not re­leased and her body was nev­er found.

The dozen men be­fore ju­ry and Jus­tice Mal­colm Holdip are: Al­lan "Scan­ny" Mar­tin, Sher­von "Buffy" Pe­ters, Kei­da Gar­cia, broth­ers Mar­lon and Earl Trim­ming­ham, Ronald Arm­strong, An­to­nio Charles, Joel Fras­er, Lyn­don James, De­von Pe­ters, An­tho­ny Dwayne Gloster and Jamille Gar­cia. A 13th man, Raphael Williams was charged with the crime but died in prison in 2011 of com­pli­ca­tions from sick­le-cell anaemia.

Their le­gal team in­cludes Ul­ric Sker­ritt, Joseph Pan­tor, Sel­wyn Mo­hammed, Lennox Sankers­ingh, Ian Brooks, Wayne Sturge, Mario Mer­ritt, Richard Valere, Kwe­si Bekoe, Col­in Selvon, Vince Charles, Chris­t­ian Chan­dler, Deli­cia Hel­wig and Alex­ia Romero.

The pros­e­cu­tion team in­cludes, Gilbert Pe­ter­son, Dana See­ta­hal and Is­rael Khan.