Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard have been accused of failing to ensure the swift conclusion of the Dana Seetahal murder trial.
This, according to Israel Khan, SC, president of the Criminal Bar Association.
Seetahal’s murder on May 4th, 2014, in Woodbrook, was initially believed to be related to her role as a junior prosecutor in the trial of 12 men accused of killing businesswoman Vindra Naipaul-Coolman, who was shot dead in December 2006 and dismembered afterwards.
The trial started in March 2014 and while Khan, the lead prosecutor, and prosecutors Gilbert Peterson, SC, and senior state attorney Joy Balkaran were assigned security for two years, neither of them were attacked during the course of the trial.
Khan, in a GML interview, said that it is “atrocious” that his colleague’s case remains unsolved and lacks a clear motive.
“If anybody was going to be killed, it had to have been the main prosecutor, which would have been me and nothing happened to me. So, we do not know the motive for her brutal murder, we are yet to know why she was killed, so we are in abeyance about that,” Khan said.
He accused the Judiciary of causing the delays in the case because of when they submitted electronic copies of the committal bundles to the DPP.
The bundles contain over 8,100 pages. The Judiciary recently stated that the documents were sent in three parts via file transfer protocol on December 20, 2023, December 21, 2023, and January 5, 2024.
“The DPP could only indict them after he gets the hard copies and he reads it and so on and then he has to assign attorneys. This matter might take up six months to a year to determine in court, I do not know,” the senior counsel explained.
He added that the DPP also requires hard copies of exhibits to ensure that all the evidence in the matter had been provided. If he is not satisfied, the DPP can send the matter back to the magistrate until he is satisfied before he eventually determines what charges will be laid against the accused.
Khan said both Gaspard and Archie owe the nation answers as to why this case has been languishing in the judicial system.
“They should have expedited this matter. It is about four years ago these men were committed. It is unfair to Dana Seetahal’s immediate relatives, friends, associates, the country at large and also the men who have been committed to stand trial. There’s a presumption that they are innocent until the state proves they are guilty beyond all reasonable doubt,” he said.
“It is a scandalous state of affairs. The whole of the Caribbean is watching this case and people in Canada, the United States, all over. If it could happen to Dana Seetahal, what about the ordinary person who has been brutally murdered?”