Jensen La Vende

Cana­di­an vlog­ger Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es will re­main in T&T un­til his next court ap­pear­ance on Au­gust 23 for case man­age­ment.

Hugh­es, who is charged with pub­lish­ing a sedi­tious pub­li­ca­tion, made his sec­ond court ap­pear­ance yes­ter­day, hav­ing ini­tial­ly plead­ed not guilty to the of­fence on June 6.

If found guilty, Hugh­es, who is out on $100,000 bail, faces a $3,000 fine or two years im­pris­on­ment.

Last week when he was giv­en per­mis­sion to leave the coun­try, he opt­ed to re­main, say­ing it made more sense to re­main for a week, ap­pear in court and re­turn to Cana­da as the ad­journ­ment date would be longer than a week.

His pass­port was or­dered to be re­turned last week but Hugh­es did not re­quest it then. Yes­ter­day, Hugh­es, who is rep­re­sent­ed by Pamela El­der SC, asked act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles for per­mis­sion to leave the coun­try as a mat­ter of for­mal­i­ty.

State at­tor­ney Danielle Thomp­son in­formed Charles that some doc­u­ments were al­ready dis­closed to the de­fence and the re­main­ing are ex­pect­ed to be giv­en be­fore the ad­journ­ment date.

Charles or­dered that all dis­clo­sure be sent to the de­fence on or by Ju­ly 22. All ob­jec­tions to the state­ments are to be made by Au­gust 19.

The mat­ter, Charles was told, will pro­ceed through for­mal ad­mis­sions, where un­con­test­ed wit­ness state­ments will be sub­mit­ted and on­ly wit­ness­es the de­fence wish­es to cross-ex­am­ine will be called. This saves on hav­ing each wit­ness tes­ti­fy and face pos­si­ble cross-ex­am­i­na­tion.

El­der re­quest­ed that Hugh­es’ elec­tron­ic equip­ment be re­turned to him, ad­vis­ing that the mem­o­ry cards can re­main as part of the pros­e­cu­tion’s ev­i­dence, as no da­ta can be stored in­ter­nal­ly on the equip­ment.

Thomp­son said she would look in­to the equip­ment be­ing re­turned to Hugh­es by the time he leaves the coun­try.