Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A con­sti­tu­tion­al case brought by busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra and his com­pa­ny DG Homes, over a search con­duct­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers in 2024, is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue even af­ter his mur­der last Fri­day.

The fu­ture of the case was dis­cussed when it came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day.

At­tor­ney Dayadai Har­ri­paul, who rep­re­sent­ed Guer­ra and the com­pa­ny, said his fam­i­ly mem­bers had tak­en the de­ci­sion to sub­sti­tute one of them as the claimant in the case for it to con­tin­ue. She said hours be­fore Guer­ra was shot dead out­side the com­pa­ny’s San­gre Grande of­fice last Fri­day, State at­tor­neys re­quest­ed an­oth­er ex­ten­sion to file their de­fence to the law­suit.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad agreed that the case could con­tin­ue with the sub­sti­tu­tion and di­rect­ed Har­ri­paul to file the nec­es­sary ap­pli­ca­tion for the change be­fore the next hear­ing of the case on May 13.

In the law­suit, Guer­ra and the com­pa­ny claimed their rights were breached when of­fi­cers as­signed to the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) de­nied them ac­cess to their lawyers dur­ing the search. His lawyers even­tu­al­ly ob­tained an emer­gency in­junc­tion pre­vent­ing the po­lice from con­tin­u­ing their probe in­to his busi­ness for al­leged hu­man traf­fick­ing and for al­leged­ly pay­ing his work­ers less than the na­tion­al min­i­mum wage.

In Jan­u­ary last year, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to strike out the case and is­sue a sum­ma­ry judg­ment.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, the State, rep­re­sent­ed by Gre­go­ry Delzin, SC, de­nied the al­le­ga­tions. It al­so con­tend­ed that Guer­ra and the com­pa­ny had not raised ex­tra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances to jus­ti­fy the ju­di­cial in­ter­ven­tion in the crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. At the time, Seep­er­sad not­ed that the State had failed to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tion that Guer­ra was sep­a­rat­ed from his at­tor­ney, Ger­ald Ramdeen, while be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed dur­ing the search.

“The de­fen­dant’s fail­ure, to date, to chal­lenge the ver­sion of events which the claimants have out­lined, ren­ders their com­plaint pre­ma­ture and the court can­not, at this stage, con­clude that the right to coun­sel was not in­fringed,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

“Con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees must be jeal­ous­ly guard­ed and this court holds the view that cit­i­zens should have un­fet­tered ac­cess to the court to ad­vance le­git­i­mate claims premised up­on al­leged con­sti­tu­tion­al vi­o­la­tions,” he added.

He said if the crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion process was ma­nip­u­lat­ed by the case as claimed, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) would have in­ter­vened.

Last Oc­to­ber, Guer­ra and his son, Garvin, were charged with un­law­ful pro­cess­ing of ag­gre­gate with­out a li­cence from the Min­istry of En­er­gy, fol­low­ing a probe in­to his quar­ry op­er­a­tions. The probe re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of 17 oth­ers and the seizure of equip­ment and ve­hi­cles.

A month lat­er, Guer­ra and his son were held on pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders un­der the then State of Emer­gency. The or­der ac­cused Guer­ra of pos­ing an im­mi­nent threat to pub­lic safe­ty, in­clud­ing be­ing re­spon­si­ble for an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter. He was al­so ac­cused of hav­ing ac­cess to high-pow­ered firearms to com­mit at­tacks against ri­val gangs.

Guer­ra and his son were de­tained for six weeks be­fore they were re­leased af­ter their lawyers, led by a British king’s coun­sel, threat­ened le­gal ac­tion over their de­ten­tion.