The retrial of the man accused of murdering four-year-old Amy Emily Annamunthodo in 2006 has been adjourned due to the withdrawal of his defence attorney from the case.
Marlon King was expected to go on trial before High Court Judge Hayden St Clair-Douglas and a 12-member jury earlier this month, but his attorney Mario Merritt indicated that he could not facilitate it based on his busy schedule.
During a status hearing on Tuesday morning, Merritt stated that he had returned the brief to the Legal Aid and Advisory Authority, which indicated that it was in the process of appointing another attorney to represent King.
The case was adjourned to January 11 to facilitate the process.
King is accused of murdering Annamunthodo at his Ste Madeleine Road, Marabella, home on May 15, 2006.
Medical reports showed that Annamunthodo was burnt with cigarettes on her vagina, inner thigh, and forearm an hour before she died. She also suffered multiple internal and external injuries throughout her body, including a broken rib and bruised organs.
In a decision in late July, Appellate Judges Alice Yorke-Soo Hon, Mark Mohammed, and Malcolm Holdip ruled that former president and High Court Judge Anthony Carmona made several errors when he presided over King’s trial in 2012.
The appeal panel ruled that in summing up the case to the jury, that eventually convicted King, Carmona misdirected them on the evidence of King’s ex-wife Lou-Ann Davis, who testified over domestic abuse she allegedly endured, and of his neighbour Anthony Rocke, who testified that he saw King punching the child 20 to 30 times while she hung from a cloth tied to her hair and attached to a door.
During the trial, King claimed that he had left the child with her mother and Rocke and suggested that he (Rocke) was in fact the culprit.
In their decision, the appeal panel rejected submissions from King’s attorneys that he should be acquitted of the charge based on the inordinate length of time between the offence and an eventual retrial.
While the panel accepted that the pace of the criminal justice system was “far from ideal”, it noted that such delays were not sufficient to trump the public’s interest in having King’s innocence or guilt determined in a fresh trial.
“In our view, the balance has been tipped in favour of the ordering of a retrial. We are satisfied that the interests of justice will be served by so ordering,” Mohammed, who delivered the panel’s unanimous decision, said.
King has since appealed the Appeal Court’s decision on the retrial but preparations for it have continued as King did not obtain a stay of the decision pending the Privy Council’s decision in his appeal.
King was also represented by Karunaa Bisramsingh, while Destinee Grey appeared for the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
