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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Men convicted of murdering Dole Chadee brother lose appeal over main witness recanting evidence

by

1251 days ago
20211011

Ten men serv­ing life sen­tences for the mur­der of the broth­er of for­mer drug king­pin Dole Chadee, have lost their fi­nal bid to quash their con­vic­tions.

De­liv­er­ing a judge­ment in their ap­peal, a short while ago, the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil ruled that the lo­cal Court of Ap­peal got it right, three years ago, when it re­fused to ad­mit fresh ev­i­dence from the State's main wit­ness, Ju­nior Gran­di­son, who claimed to have false­ly ac­cused them of the mur­der of Thack­oor Boodram.

"The Court of Ap­peal did not ap­ply too high a test of cred­i­bil­i­ty when de­cid­ing whether to ad­mit the fresh ev­i­dence. The Court analy­sis was com­pre­hen­sive and nec­es­sar­i­ly ro­bust," Dame Ju­lia Macur, who wrote the writ­ten judge­ment, said.

Michael “Rat” Ma­haraj, Samuel Ma­haraj, Dami­ah Rami­ah, Bob­by Rami­ah, Seenath Rami­ah, Daniel Gopaul, Richard Hug­gins, Leslie Hug­gins, Mark Jaik­er­an and Ju­nior Phillip were con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Boodram in late 1997.

Boodram, a pig farmer, was kid­napped from his home in south Trinidad on De­cem­ber 20, 1997.

A ran­som was de­mand­ed by his ab­duc­tors, but 10 days lat­er his head was found in a whiskey box at the Ca­roni Cre­ma­tion Site.

The group was even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed in Au­gust 2001.

Their ap­peals to the Court of Ap­peal and Privy Coun­cil were re­ject­ed, but the lat­ter com­mut­ed their death sen­tences to life im­pris­on­ment as there had been de­lays be­tween their con­vic­tions and their ap­peals.

In June 2011, Gran­di­son gave the sworn state­ment in which he claimed to have been co­erced by Boodram's oth­er broth­er Pand­lal in­to im­pli­cat­ing the men, who he knew.

The two al­leged­ly met in prison, while Gran­di­son was await­ing tri­al for the mur­ders of Ian George and Wal­ter Reg­is and the at­tempt­ed mur­der of Court­ney Reid.

The charges against Gran­di­son were dropped in ex­change for his tes­ti­mo­ny against the group.

In 2014, the Pres­i­dent re­ferred the mat­ter to the Court of Ap­peal to con­sid­er whether Gran­di­son's new claims could be ad­mit­ted.

In re­ject­ing the fresh ev­i­dence, the Court of Ap­peal took in­to ac­count the fact that Gran­di­son re­fused to tes­ti­fy be­fore them dur­ing a hear­ing of the ap­peal in 2017.

They re­ject­ed record­ed tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions be­tween Michael Ma­haraj and Gran­di­son, which the men were con­tend­ing proved that Gran­di­son had ad­mit­ted to fab­ri­cat­ing the case.

While the judges agreed that it was Gran­di­son in the record­ings, they said that he was be­ing led on by Ma­haraj.

"In or­ches­trat­ing these phone calls and lead­ing Gran­di­son in the con­ver­sa­tions pre­sent­ed to us, Ma­haraj has demon­strat­ed the ca­pac­i­ty and in­tent to ma­nip­u­late the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed to this Court. Ob­jec­tive­ly, these ac­tions and the ev­i­dence pro­cured there­by do not bear the hall­marks of cred­i­bil­i­ty," the ap­peal pan­el said.

Al­though the men were al­so chal­leng­ing their com­mut­ed life sen­tences in the ap­peal, the Privy Coun­cil de­ferred its con­sid­er­a­tion of the is­sue.

The Privy Coun­cil said it would wait un­til it hears and de­ter­mines a fi­nal ap­peal of 82 for­mer death row in­mates, whose sen­tences were sim­i­lar­ly com­mut­ed.

In that case, the Court of Ap­peal ruled that they should not have been giv­en blan­ket sen­tences of life im­pris­on­ment but rather should have been giv­en de­fined terms of im­pris­on­ment based on the unique cir­cum­stances of their cas­es. That case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing in the Privy Coun­cil, next month.

The group was rep­re­sent­ed by Ed­ward Fitzger­ald, QC, Aman­da Clift-Matthews, Jagdeo Singh, Ka­ri­na Singh and Suneesh Singh. Tom Poole, QC, and Han­nah Fry rep­re­sent­ed the State.


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