Derek Achong

The ea­ger­ly await­ed tri­al of two men, ac­cused of mur­der­ing  Sean Luke when they were teenagers, is set to kick off lat­er this month. 

The judge-alone tri­al was ini­tial­ly card­ed to start be­fore High Court Judge Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds last month, but was put off by pre-tri­al le­gal ap­pli­ca­tions over the ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of state­ments the duo al­leged made to po­lice be­fore be­ing charged.

Ram­sumair-Hinds set a new tri­al date of April 19 af­ter the last wit­ness tes­ti­fied in re­la­tion to the ap­pli­ca­tions, dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

With­out re­veal­ing the out­come of the le­gal chal­lenges mount­ed by both men’s at­tor­neys, which she is yet to rule on, Ram­sumair-Hinds warned both pros­e­cu­tors and de­fence at­tor­neys to be pre­pared to start the case on that date. 

Luke went miss­ing near his home at Or­ange Val­ley Road in Cou­va in March 2006. 

Two days lat­er, his body was found in a sug­ar cane field near his home. 

The six-year-old had been sodomised with a sug­ar cane stalk. 

Akeel Mitchell, now 28, and 30-year-old Richard Cha­too were charged with the crime as teenagers.

Since Ram­sumair-Hinds be­gan man­ag­ing the case last year, there have been sev­er­al chal­lenges that threat­ened to de­rail it. 

First­ly, Ram­sumair-Hinds dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion for a per­ma­nent stay of the case, which was based on the fact that the as­signed pros­e­cu­tor had rep­re­sent­ed one of the ac­cused men briefly be­fore join­ing the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

While Ram­sumair-Hinds strong­ly crit­i­cised pros­e­cu­tor Maria Lyons-Ed­wards’ con­duct in fail­ing to dis­close her con­flict of in­ter­est at a pre­lim­i­nary stage, she stat­ed that there was no ev­i­dence that it had the po­ten­tial to taint the work of the pros­e­cu­tion team that was even­tu­al­ly as­signed to re­place her, as they all at­test­ed that they did not dis­cuss the case with her.

Ram­sumair-Hinds re­ferred her rul­ing on Lyons-Ed­wards’ con­duct to the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

Ram­sumair-Hinds then re­ject­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion to quash the in­dict­ment against Mitchell due to in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against him. 

Mitchell is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Mario Mer­ritt, Kir­by Joseph and Ran­dall Raphael while Evans Welch, Kel­ston Pope and Gabriel Her­nan­dez are rep­re­sent­ing Cha­too. Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal, An­ju Bho­la and Sophia Sandy-Smith are pros­e­cut­ing.