Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, has been giv­en just over a month to de­cide whether to con­tin­ue the pros­e­cu­tion of two po­lice of­fi­cers ac­cused of rob­bing a Chi­nese cou­ple more than a decade ago.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad is­sued the 35-day ul­ti­ma­tum yes­ter­day, up­hold­ing a law­suit brought by Sgt Lester Gar­cia and PC Dex­ter Ed­wards.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that Gas­pard un­rea­son­ably de­layed fil­ing in­dict­ments against the of­fi­cers af­ter they were com­mit­ted to stand tri­al by a mag­is­trate at the end of a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in 2020. The fil­ing of in­dict­ments is re­quired for cas­es to be list­ed for tri­al and man­aged by a High Court judge.

“The De­fen­dant’s re­sult­ing in­ac­tion in ei­ther fil­ing an in­dict­ment or dis­con­tin­u­ing the pro­ceed­ings is not rea­son­able and falls square­ly out­side the range of any law­ful dis­cre­tionary re­spons­es which is open to him,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

In Sep­tem­ber 2014, Gar­cia, Ed­wards, act­ing Cpl Shel­don Pe­ter­son, and an­oth­er of­fi­cer were charged with three counts of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. They were ac­cused of steal­ing a large quan­ti­ty of cash while search­ing the Arou­ca home of a Chi­nese busi­ness­man and his wife. All were grant­ed bail but sus­pend­ed pend­ing the out­come of the case.

At the end of the in­quiry be­fore for­mer se­nior mag­is­trate and cur­rent tem­po­rary High Court Judge In­drani Ce­de­no, Gar­cia, Ed­wards, and Pe­ter­son were com­mit­ted to stand tri­al for two of the three charges, while their col­league was dis­charged.

In Oc­to­ber 2024, 54-year-old Pe­ter­son was shot and killed in a shootout with ban­dits at a su­per­mar­ket where he worked while un­der sus­pen­sion.

Gar­cia and Ed­wards, through their lawyers led by Sophia Chote, SC, filed the law­suit af­ter re­peat­ed­ly seek­ing up­dates on Gas­pard’s de­lay in fil­ing in­dict­ments and re­ceiv­ing no ex­pla­na­tion.

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ac­knowl­edged there is no le­gal re­quire­ment for the DPP to act im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing com­mit­tal, he em­pha­sised that the of­fice’s con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date re­quires time­ly and re­spon­si­ble ac­tion.

“This court recog­nis­es the im­por­tance of al­low­ing the de­fen­dant ad­e­quate and rea­son­able time to re­view the com­mit­tal bun­dle be­fore de­cid­ing whether to prof­fer an in­dict­ment, but the ex­er­cise of this con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion can­not be at his plea­sure,” the judge said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed Gas­pard’s claims that the de­lay was caused by ad­min­is­tra­tive con­straints, in­clud­ing a back­log of 400 cap­i­tal cas­es await­ing in­dict­ment prepa­ra­tion.

“These ex­pla­na­tions are de­void of mer­it and are re­ject­ed. It ap­pears that the de­fen­dant nei­ther un­der­took an ob­jec­tive, in­de­pen­dent, and crit­i­cal as­sess­ment of the ev­i­dence nor did he eval­u­ate its suf­fi­cien­cy,” the judge said.

The court al­so dis­missed Gas­pard’s ar­gu­ment that the de­lay was due to in­audi­ble and in­de­ci­pher­able au­dio record­ings of the State’s main wit­ness, not­ing that any such is­sues could be ad­dressed by the judge pre­sid­ing over the even­tu­al tri­al.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that the DPP failed to con­sid­er ev­i­den­tial and pub­lic in­ter­est fac­tors as re­quired by the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al code.

“In fact, it ap­pears that the de­fen­dant has adopt­ed a rou­tine and ro­bot­ic ad­min­is­tra­tive ap­proach. No prop­er re­gard was giv­en to the fact that the best in­ter­ests of the pub­lic are served when pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al de­ci­sions are ef­fect­ed with alacrity and are root­ed in prac­ti­cal­i­ty, com­mon sense, and fair­ness,” he said.

The judge fur­ther ques­tioned why Gas­pard be­lieved an in-depth analy­sis of the ev­i­dence was re­quired, point­ing out that such as­sess­ment should have com­menced pri­or to and dur­ing the in­quiry, in which his pros­e­cu­tors par­tic­i­pat­ed.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad grant­ed a de­c­la­ra­tion that the DPP’s de­lay was un­rea­son­able, im­prop­er and un­law­ful. The DPP’s Of­fice was al­so or­dered to pay Gar­cia and Ed­wards’ le­gal costs for the law­suit.

The of­fi­cers were rep­re­sent­ed by Saman­tha Ram­saran, while the DPP’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Rachael Ja­cob, Akee­nie Mur­ray, Lianne Thomas and Fazana Ali.