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Monday, March 3, 2025

Man freed of murder after ten years on remand

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39 days ago
20250123
Kareem Halls, centre, poses with his mother and lawyers Kelston Pope, left, and Dr Jens-Ulrich Poppen at the Hall of Justice, Port-of-Spain, after being freed of murder yesterday.

Kareem Halls, centre, poses with his mother and lawyers Kelston Pope, left, and Dr Jens-Ulrich Poppen at the Hall of Justice, Port-of-Spain, after being freed of murder yesterday.

DEREK ACHONG

Af­ter spend­ing al­most a decade on re­mand, a man from Port-of-Spain has been freed of mur­der­ing a ven­dor at the Tu­na­puna Mar­ket.

Ka­reem Halls was freed of the charge af­ter High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion brought by his lawyers, Kel­ston Pope and Dr Jens-Ul­rich Pop­pen, af­ter pros­e­cu­tors closed their case against him.

Halls was ac­cused of mur­der­ing Kadeem Sawyer on Oc­to­ber 25, 2014.

Sawyer, of Achong Trace, Tu­na­puna, was at his veg­etable stall at the mar­ket when he was ap­proached by two men, who shot him sev­er­al times be­fore run­ning away.

In March 2021, Sawyer’s 17-year-old broth­er, Christo­pher Cum­mings, went miss­ing. Four days lat­er, his body was found un­der sheets of gal­vanise in an emp­ty lot near his home.

He had been shot sev­er­al times.

In their no-case sub­mis­sion, Halls’ lawyers chal­lenged the ev­i­dence of a wit­ness to the mur­der.

Giv­ing ev­i­dence in his brief tri­al ear­li­er this month, the wit­ness ad­mit­ted that he did not see the front view of the faces of the men who at­tacked Sawyer.

He al­so con­fessed that he point­ed Halls out in an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rade be­cause he matched the physique of one of Sawyer’s at­tack­ers.

Halls’ lawyers did not chal­lenge the wit­ness’ re­li­a­bil­i­ty, cred­i­bil­i­ty and de­meanour but claimed that the 12-mem­ber ju­ry in the case should not con­sid­er his pur­port­ed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Halls based on its qual­i­ty.

Deal­ing specif­i­cal­ly with the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, they said it was made in chal­leng­ing and un­cer­tain cir­cum­stances.

“The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was based on a fleet­ing and par­tial view of the men as they ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle and ran away,” they said.

“Im­por­tant­ly, they were not stand­ing still but were in mo­tion, which great­ly re­duces the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion made in such cir­cum­stances,” they added.

Stat­ing that there was no sup­port­ing ev­i­dence link­ing Halls to the crime be­sides from the wit­ness, they said, “The case should be with­drawn from the ju­ry’s de­lib­er­a­tion, as there is a sig­nif­i­cant risk of an un­safe con­vic­tion, which could lead to a mis­car­riage of jus­tice.”

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas agreed and di­rect­ed the ju­ry to re­turn with a not-guilty ver­dict for Halls.

In a brief in­ter­view out­side the Hall of Jus­tice af­ter he was freed, Halls said that he was pleased with the out­come as he wait­ed sev­er­al years for his case to come to tri­al due to pro­tract­ed de­lays in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

“I think I should have been freed six or sev­en years, now. Whilst I was in the sys­tem, I see like it chang­ing up, and I give thanks for that. I was one of the few in­mates se­lect­ed to have their cas­es start­ed this year. I thank God for that,” he said.

He said that he was ex­cit­ed to sam­ple his moth­er’s cook­ing and to rekin­dle his re­la­tion­ship with his two daugh­ters, in­clud­ing one who was three years old when he was charged and in­car­cer­at­ed.

“The on­ly thing I ex­cit­ed to do right now is re­unite with my loved ones,” he said, as he thanked his rel­a­tives for stand­ing by him over the past decade.


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