Gail Alexan­der

The State will to­day file ad­di­tion­al grounds for ap­peal against Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad’s or­der on the Brent Thomas mat­ter.

This was con­firmed on Sat­ur­day.

Last Fri­day, the State sub­mit­ted grounds of ap­peal to the Ap­peal Court against the or­der of Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s April 25 judg­ment on the Thomas is­sue.

The court’s record at 11.34 pm ac­knowl­edged up­load­ing of the State’s sub­mis­sion done un­der the Gazette’s Prac­tice Di­rec­tion #12 . The mat­ter is now sub-ju­dice, of­fi­cials said.

The State is seek­ing an or­der set­ting aside the judge’s or­ders and seek­ing that costs of the ap­peal be paid by the re­spon­dents –Thomas and Shoot­ing Spe­cial­ist Train­ing Cen­tre Ltd (SST­CL).

The State is al­so seek­ing to have its ap­peal deemed ur­gent and heard in pri­or­i­ty over oth­er ap­peals, and that pend­ing the hear­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tion of the ap­peal, the judge’s or­der be stayed.

Last week, it was re­port­ed that Jus­tice Ram­per­sad would to­day give di­rec­tions on fil­ing sub­mis­sions on the com­pen­sa­tion to be paid to Thomas fol­low­ing his le­gal vic­to­ry in the April 25 mat­ter.

Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment ruled that Thomas—at the cen­tre of po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in mid-2022, —was “un­law­ful­ly ab­duct­ed” last Oc­to­ber when T&T po­lice of­fi­cers, with Bar­ba­dos po­lice of­fi­cers’ as­sis­tance, de­tained Thomas while in tran­sit from Bar­ba­dos to Mi­a­mi.

Ram­per­sad sug­gest­ed the man­ner of the de­ten­tion in­di­cat­ed an at­tempt to by­pass the law­ful pro­ce­dure of re­quest­ing Thomas’ ex­tra­di­tion. He halt­ed the crim­i­nal case against Thomas.

The TTPS team in­volved in the mat­ter in­volved As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Birch.

Rep­re­sent­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice are Gilbert Pe­ter­son SC, Vanes­sa Gopaul, Sevt­lana Dass and Adana Hosang-Hoa.

The State’s 24 grounds of ap­peal claimed the judge was wrong, erred in law (and oth­er de­scrip­tions) on 30 odd as­pects, in­clud­ing per­tain­ing to Bar­ba­dos, the TTPS and Birch, on one and con­duct of T&T of­fi­cers.

The sub­mis­sion al­so al­leged dis­re­gard of po­lice ev­i­dence and the law that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice had no au­thor­i­ty to is­sue an im­port per­mit for pro­hib­it­ed weapons.

The State claimed Ram­per­sad erred in law “by fail­ing to find that as a mat­ter of law, “The im­port per­mits and/or li­cences is­sued by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to the re­spon­dents for the im­por­ta­tion and/or own­er­ship/pos­ses­sion of pro­hib­it­ed weapons were in­valid and in­ca­pable of con­sti­tut­ing any law­ful au­thor­i­ty” for them to im­port or pos­sess pro­hib­it­ed weapons.