With ac­cused mur­der­ers now able to ac­cess bail from the court, Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land says T&T needs to re­vis­it leg­is­la­tion to once again de­ny them from be­ing re­leased from re­mand.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue of how mur­der ac­cused Nester “Pap­pi” Sam­my was able to ac­cess bail for pos­ses­sion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion de­spite al­ready be­ing on bail for mur­der, Scot­land said, “The an­swer to that is yes, it (Bail Act) needs to be re­vis­it­ed.”

Scot­land said, “From where I sit, I de­clare my in­ter­est as the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South and a mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment team, and we think so.”

Sam­my, 33, from Co­corite, was killed on Sun­day af­ter a gun­man shot him sev­er­al times as he sat in a white Suzu­ki Grand Vi­tara at Su­per­Pharm, Diego Mar­tin. He was be­fore the court for al­leged­ly mur­der­ing Shaquime Williams in 2018. Last March, po­lice ar­rest­ed and charged him af­ter catch­ing him with eight pis­tols and over 3,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion at an apart­ment in Vic­to­ria Keys, Diego Mar­tin.

He was out on $250,000 bail. 
Sec­tion 5 (1) of the Bail Act states that a court may grant bail to any­one charged with any of­fence oth­er than mur­der, trea­son, pira­cy, hi­jack­ing or any of­fence for which death is the penal­ty fixed by law.

The law changed af­ter then pris­on­er Ak­ili Charles filed a chal­lenge, say­ing that deny­ing some­one ac­cused of mur­der bail was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

While mur­der is now a bail­able of­fence, Scot­land said peo­ple would need to look at the ap­pli­ca­tion to the court. In Sam­my’s case, he said there would have been Sam­my’s at­tor­ney and a state pros­e­cu­tor who made sub­mis­sions to the judge.

Scot­land said a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer has var­i­ous con­sid­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the of­fence, whether the ac­cused is a flight risk or com­mit­ted an of­fence while on bail in an­oth­er mat­ter.

Scot­land said firearms use re­quires a po­lit­i­cal ap­proach.

Mean­while, crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Jagdeo Singh said un­der the Bail Act, a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer has to con­sid­er whether the ac­cused has com­mit­ted an of­fence while on tem­po­rary re­lief for an­oth­er of­fence when de­ter­min­ing a bail ap­pli­ca­tion.

Singh said while he did not know the de­tails of Sam­my’s case, it ap­peared the courts grant­ed bail to some­one charged with mur­der who end­ed up com­mit­ting an­oth­er of­fence. Singh said that should have dis­qual­i­fied Sam­my from ob­tain­ing bail for the sec­ond of­fence.

He said there was a gen­er­al com­mon law and Bail Act con­sid­er­a­tion that a per­son charged with an of­fence while on bail for an­oth­er ought not to get bail.
“Of course, the ju­di­cial of­fi­cers would have had the facts be­fore them. Maybe the ev­i­dence was weak. I do not know. Maybe there was no ob­jec­tion. I do not know.

“I do not know what the con­sid­er­a­tions are that the ju­di­cial of­fi­cer took in­to ac­count in grant­i­ng bail to a per­son charged for an of­fence while on bail for an­oth­er of­fence and a se­ri­ous of­fence as mur­der,” Singh said.

His view on leg­is­lat­ing mur­der as a non-bail­able of­fence dif­fers from Scot­land’s, say­ing the is­sue lies in hav­ing an ef­fec­tive sys­tem that al­lows judges and mag­is­trates to have suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to make in­formed de­ci­sions. He said noth­ing pre­vents the pros­e­cu­tion from ob­ject­ing to bail by sub­mit­ting sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion they do not wish to re­veal to the de­fence.
Singh said one so­lu­tion lies in be­ing able to ef­fec­tive­ly mon­i­tor re­leased con­victs and peo­ple on bail in a time­ly and pre­cise man­ner with elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing bracelets.

“Whether you get charged for spit­ting on the pave­ment or whether you get charged for mur­der, once you are re­leased on bail, you ought to be made to wear an elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing bracelet so law en­force­ment knows your where­abouts at all times,” he sug­gest­ed.
He said any­one wear­ing these bracelets would not com­mit a crime as po­lice could pin­point their ex­act lo­ca­tion in re­la­tion to an of­fence. He sug­gest­ed Par­lia­ment amend the Bail Act to use bracelets.

Singh said it will al­so pre­vent ju­ve­niles charged with mi­nor of­fences from pro­gress­ing to more se­vere crimes.