A Waller­field man, who has been on re­mand for mur­der for al­most two decades, is ex­pect­ed to be grant­ed bail next week. 

Dur­ing a hear­ing of Ogee Tem­pro’s bail ap­pli­ca­tion on Fri­day, High Court Judge Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds stat­ed that it (the ap­pli­ca­tion) was “quite favourable” and that she would de­liv­er her rul­ing next Wednes­day af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers com­plete checks on his fam­i­ly’s home. 

State pros­e­cu­tor Danielle Thomp­son had re­quest­ed an ad­journ­ment of the hear­ing as she stat­ed that po­lice of­fi­cers had dif­fi­cul­ties in lo­cat­ing Tem­pro’s fam­i­ly home when they were tasked with con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions rel­a­tive to his bail ap­pli­ca­tion. 

Tem­pro’s lawyer Sophia Chote, SC, pre-empt­ed the move for the ad­journ­ment as Tem­pro’s moth­er Pa­tri­cia and sis­ter Ka­reema, a po­lice of­fi­cer, were present in her of­fice to an­swer ques­tions from Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds. 

Tem­pro’s moth­er stat­ed that he could be eas­i­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the fam­i­ly’s three bed­room home as it is cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pied by her, her hus­band and one of her daugh­ters as her oth­er four chil­dren in­clud­ing Ka­reema had moved out. 

Tem­pro’s moth­er al­so con­firmed that the house had in­ter­net ser­vice and that she con­sent to elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment be­ing in­stalled at her home to fa­cil­i­tate her son be­ing grant­ed bail. 

“It would be an ho­n­our to wel­come my son back,” she said. 

Thomp­son in­di­cat­ed that the DPP’s Of­fice would not be ob­ject­ing to bail for Tem­pro as he had no dis­ci­pli­nary in­frac­tions whilst on re­mand in prison. 

Kevin Patrick, who like Tem­pro is ac­cused of mur­der­ing Yip Manin Luk but is to be tried sep­a­rate­ly as the joint in­dict­ment was sev­ered, did not ap­pear as lucky as Thomp­son strong­ly op­posed his bail ap­pli­ca­tion. 

Thomp­son point­ed out that un­like Tem­pro, Patrick had sev­er­al in­frac­tions whilst in prison in­clud­ing in­cit­ing a ri­ot and be­ing in pos­ses­sion of con­tra­band items. 

Thomp­son al­so ex­pressed con­cerns about Patrick’s liv­ing arrange­ments if grant­ed bail as she point­ed out that po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors stat­ed that his fam­i­ly home was lo­cat­ed in an area where there is al­leged gang ac­tiv­i­ty and nu­mer­ous re­ports of shoot­ings. 

She al­so point­ed out that the State’s case against Patrick was dif­fer­ent to Tem­pro as he (Patrick) was al­leged to have shot Luk. 

Based on Thomp­son’s sub­mis­sions, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds ad­journed Patrick’s bail ap­pli­ca­tion to ear­ly June to give his at­tor­neys Lar­ry Williams and Shaun Mor­ris an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make sub­mis­sions. 

The duo is ac­cused of mur­der­ing Luk on No­vem­ber 23, 2002
The duo were al­leged­ly rob­bing Alan Fong and Stephanie Yee Fong’s home in San­ta Rosa, Ari­ma, when Luk, who worked for the cou­ple at their va­ri­ety store, was shot and killed af­ter re­sist­ing. 

Tem­pro and Patrick were con­vict­ed af­ter a tri­al in 2009 but their con­vic­tions and cor­re­spond­ing death sen­tences were sub­se­quent­ly quashed by the Court of Ap­peal, which or­dered a re­tri­al. 

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on Tem­pro’s be­half, ear­li­er this week, Chote com­plained that her client had been wait­ing 12 years for a re­tri­al due to de­lays in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. 
“It is un­con­scionable that some­one should be await­ing a re­tri­al for 12 years, whether there is a pan­dem­ic or not...This is noth­ing less than an atroc­i­ty,” Chote said. 

The duo are seek­ing to ben­e­fit from a land­mark Court of Ap­peal rul­ing on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Sec­tion 5(1) of the Bail Act, which pre­vi­ous­ly pre­clud­ed ju­di­cial of­fi­cers from con­sid­er­ing bail for per­sons charged with mur­der. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment in late Feb­ru­ary, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and two of his col­leagues ruled that the leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sion in­fringed on the Ju­di­cia­ry’s ju­ris­dic­tion to con­sid­er bail. 

Al­though the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ap­plied for the judge­ment to be sus­pend­ed pend­ing the out­come of a fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil due to is­sues with re­spond­ing to a mul­ti­tude of bail ap­pli­ca­tions, such was de­nied by both the Court of Ap­peal and Privy Coun­cil. The fi­nal ap­peal is set to be heard in ear­ly June.  

Dana-Marie Smith is al­so rep­re­sent­ing Tem­pro while Rhea Lib­ert is ap­pear­ing along­side Thomp­son for the State.