Geisha Kow­lessar

Pathol­o­gist Dr Hughvon des Vi­gnes says if the con­tract of foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov is re­newed he will no longer work at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James.

Des Vi­gnes made the com­ment at a press con­fer­ence at the of­fice of his at­tor­ney, Glen­da More­an-Phillip, on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Claim­ing he was the on­ly per­son in the coun­try qual­i­fied to con­duct foren­sic au­top­sies, Des Vi­gnes said through More­an-Phillip he had writ­ten to the Med­ical Board seek­ing in­for­ma­tion about Alexan­drov's qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

"You don't come here and say you're work­ing in foren­sic, so you're a foren­sic pathol­o­gist. Let's see your qual­i­fi­ca­tions," Des Vi­gnes said, adding he al­so had queries about Dr Es­lyn Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris, who al­so per­formed au­top­sies at the cen­tre.

On why he had now cho­sen to go pub­lic with this in­for­ma­tion, as Alexan­drov has been work­ing in T&T since 2008, des Vi­gnes said he had to pro­ceed with cau­tion as he did not want to ad­verse­ly af­fect the rep­u­ta­tion of all doc­tors.

"To ex­pose wrong­do­ing by doc­tors is of­ten to bring down the en­tire pro­fes­sion and one should seek to rem­e­dy these things be­fore you come out in the pub­lic," he said.

He said he had writ­ten to the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Health Min­istry and the Di­rec­tor of the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre on the is­sue.

Des Vi­gnes al­so queried Alexan­drov's habit of giv­ing in­for­ma­tion to the me­dia.

"Dr Alexan­drov has been in the me­dia with all the cas­es. There seems to be no con­fi­den­tial­i­ty clause in his con­tract," Des Vi­gnes said.

Asked if he com­mu­ni­cat­ed with any­one in the me­dia, Des Vi­gnes ad­mit­ted that he did.

Last year, Des Vi­gnes ap­peared be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate charged with as­sault­ing Alexan­drov at the cen­tre.

Ef­forts yes­ter­day to con­tact Alexan­drov and Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris to re­spond to the state­ments made by Des Vi­gnes were un­suc­cess­ful.

Alexan­drov has been out­spo­ken re­gard­ing the poor con­di­tions at the cen­tre and the dire need to up­grade the fa­cil­i­ties.

More in­fo

In Jan­u­ary, Alexan­drov's con­tract end­ed but Jus­tice Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har re­cent­ly in­struct­ed that it be re­newed on a tem­po­rary ba­sis.

Dur­ing the in­fa­mous tri­al of Brad Boyce, the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of Des Vi­gnes were chal­lenged and ruled in­ad­mis­si­ble by then High Court judge Her­bert Vol­ney.

Boyce was ac­cused of manslaugh­ter in the death of Ja­son John­son who was struck in the head dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion out­side a night­club in 1996.

Boyce went on tri­al for manslaugh­ter be­fore Vol­ney, who, act­ing on his own ac­cord, called then chief pathol­o­gist Prof Ram­nath Chan­du­lal to tes­ti­fy about the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of Des Vi­gnes, who had tes­ti­fied in the case re­gard­ing his au­top­sy re­port on the cause of John­son's death.

Based on Chan­du­lal's tes­ti­mo­ny, Vol­ney di­rect­ed the ju­ry to re­turn a not-guilty ver­dict, and Boyce, who now lives in Aus­tralia, was freed.

The Privy Coun­cil ruled in 2006 that Vol­ney was wrong in law, but that too long a time had passed, and it would be op­pres­sive for Boyce to face a re­tri­al.