Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A San Fer­nan­do se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer who spent near­ly three decades await­ing the out­come of a crim­i­nal case be­fore be­ing ac­quit­ted has sued the State for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion.

Ce­cil Felm­ing, through his at­tor­ney, Ki­ran Pan­day, filed the law­suit against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, claim­ing the pro­ceed­ings were wrong­ful, op­pres­sive and ma­li­cious.

Felm­ing, 45, was charged with rob­bery with vi­o­lence in Ju­ly 1997.

He was ac­quit­ted on April 2, 2025, af­ter a judge-alone tri­al.

In his claim, Felm­ing says the State main­tained the charge for about 27 years and eight months with­out bring­ing the case to a time­ly con­clu­sion, caus­ing se­ri­ous harm to his lib­er­ty, rep­u­ta­tion, dig­ni­ty, peace of mind and fam­i­ly life.

He says the pro­longed pro­ceed­ings left him liv­ing un­der the stig­ma and threat of con­vic­tion for a se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fence for near­ly three decades.

Ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments, the pros­e­cu­tion con­tin­ued af­ter the death of the vir­tu­al com­plainant, whose ev­i­dence was cen­tral to the case.

The State lat­er ap­plied un­der sec­tion 15C of the Ev­i­dence Act to have the de­ceased vir­tu­al com­plainant’s ev­i­dence ad­mit­ted, but the judge re­ject­ed the ap­pli­ca­tion.

Felm­ing con­tends that, by the time the ap­pli­ca­tion was made, there was no longer rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause to con­tin­ue the pro­ceed­ings against him.

He al­leges that the State failed to ad­e­quate­ly re­view the strength of its case and dis­con­tin­ue the pros­e­cu­tion when it be­came ap­par­ent, or ought rea­son­ably to have be­come ap­par­ent, that the charge could no longer be prop­er­ly sus­tained.

He al­so ar­gues that the State knew, or ought to have recog­nised, that the ev­i­den­tial foun­da­tion of the case had ma­te­ri­al­ly weak­ened, yet con­tin­ued to pur­sue the charge.

He says this amount­ed to an op­pres­sive use of the crim­i­nal process.

The case came be­fore Jus­tice Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle on April 2, 2025, for a judge-alone tri­al con­duct­ed by elec­tron­ic hear­ing. Felm­ing was found not guilty at the end of the tri­al.

His claim al­leges that con­tin­u­ing the pros­e­cu­tion un­der those cir­cum­stances was not a bona fide ef­fort to se­cure jus­tice, but an im­prop­er and op­pres­sive use of the crim­i­nal process.

Felm­ing is seek­ing gen­er­al, ag­gra­vat­ed and ex­em­plary dam­ages, as well as in­ter­est and costs.