Two men, ac­cused of bru­tal­ly mur­der­ing six-year-old Sean Luke over 16 years ago, have to face a re­tri­al. 

The re­tri­al for Akeel Mitchell and Richard Cha­too was or­dered by Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed, and Maria Wil­son, at the end of a vir­tu­al hear­ing, a short while ago.  

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) George Bus­by con­ced­ed four grounds of ap­peal raised by the duo's le­gal team.  

"We feel that we are un­able to de­fend those grounds with the re­sult that the State has to con­cede in this ap­peal," Bus­by said. 

Bus­by ad­mit­ted that High Court Judge Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds made sev­er­al er­rors when she presided over the duo's vir­tu­al judge-alone tri­al, last year, which re­sult­ed in a mis­car­riage of jus­tice.  

De­spite the po­si­tion, Bus­by sug­gest­ed that the DPP's Of­fice was sym­pa­thet­ic to Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds based on the com­plex­i­ty of the case.  "This was ob­vi­ous­ly a very dif­fi­cult tri­al and by no means was it sim­ple. One can have em­pa­thy for the task that the learned tri­al judge had to face," he said.  

The pan­el agreed to up­hold the ap­peal based on the con­ces­sions and or­dered the re­tri­al af­ter both Bus­by and the duo's at­tor­ney Jagdeo Singh agreed that such was ap­pro­pri­ate in the cir­cum­stances. 

As part of their de­ci­sion, the pan­el or­dered that the case come up for case man­age­ment be­fore an­oth­er judge on or be­fore next Mon­day.  

Luke, of Hen­ry Street, Or­ange Val­ley Road in Cou­va, went miss­ing on the evening of March 26, 2006, and his de­com­pos­ing body was found two days lat­er. 

An au­top­sy re­vealed that he died from in­ter­nal in­juries and bleed­ing aris­ing out of be­ing sodom­ized with sug­ar­cane stalk. Cha­too and Mitchell, who is the step­son of Cha­too's broth­er, were charged with the crime.  

Dur­ing the tri­al, State pros­e­cu­tors led the ev­i­dence of two teenagers Avinash Ba­boolal and Arvis Pradeep, who claimed that Cha­too had in­vit­ed Luke to ac­com­pa­ny them on a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion.  

Both Ba­boolal and Pradeep claimed that they saw Luke, Cha­too and Mitchell en­ter an aban­doned sug­ar­cane field, where Luke's body was even­tu­al­ly found, with on­ly Cha­too and Mitchell emerg­ing.  

How­ev­er, while Ba­boolal claimed that they en­tered the field on their way to the riv­er, Pradeep claimed the di­ver­sion came when they were re­turn­ing.  

In con­vict­ing the duo, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds re­ject­ed a video-record­ed con­fes­sion state­ment, in which Cha­too im­pli­cat­ed him­self and Mitchell.  

In the record­ing, Cha­too claimed that Mitchell, who was spend­ing time at his home, re­quest­ed that he (Mitchell) have sex with him.  

Ac­cord­ing to Cha­too, af­ter he re­fused, he re­luc­tant­ly agreed to Mitchell's re­quest to in­tro­duce him to Luke, who was his (Cha­too) neigh­bour.  

Cha­too claimed that he mere­ly held Luke's hands and cov­ered his mouth as Mitchell raped him and sodom­ized him with the sug­ar­cane stalk.  

How­ev­er, Cha­too elect­ed to tes­ti­fy in his de­fence dur­ing the tri­al and claimed that he fab­ri­cat­ed the con­fes­sion as he was threat­ened and co­erced by homi­cide de­tec­tives.  

Cha­too de­nied any wrong­do­ing and claimed that Mitchell did not ac­com­pa­ny the group on the fish­ing trip. He al­so sought to sug­gest that Ba­boolal may have been the per­pe­tra­tor.  

Pros­e­cu­tors al­so led DNA ev­i­dence which showed that Mitchell's se­men was found on Luke's dis­card­ed un­der­wear.  In the ap­peal, the duo's lawyers claimed that Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds did not prop­er­ly con­sid­er the le­gal is­sue of joint en­ter­prise by rul­ing out Cha­too's state­ment, which was the on­ly ev­i­dence sug­gest­ing the role of both Cha­too and Mitchell in the crime.  

They claimed that the judge should have con­sid­ered manslaugh­ter or felony mur­der for Cha­too as the ev­i­dence did not in­di­cate that he had the in­tent to mur­der Luke or as­sist in do­ing so.  

While Bus­by con­ced­ed some of the grounds, he main­tained that Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds did prop­er­ly con­sid­er Ba­boolal's ev­i­dence and cred­i­bil­i­ty.  The ap­peal pan­el did not agree as it point­ed out the judge failed to demon­strate how she con­sid­ered se­ri­ous in­con­sis­ten­cies in Ba­boolal's ev­i­dence.  

Mitchell and Cha­too were rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh, Vashisht Seep­er­sad, Richard Jag­gasar, Alyssa Seecha­ran, Sav­it­ri Sama­roo, Vere-Marie Khan, Shane Pa­tience, and Khadi­ja Sinanan.  

As­sis­tant DPP Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal ap­peared along­side Bus­by for the State. 

Re­porter: Derek Achong