The Chairman of the Commission of Enquiry into the Paria diving tragedy is in agreement with the Director of Public Prosecution’s calls for a police investigation.
Jerome Lynch KC, in a release yesterday (Tuesday, 6 July, 2024), says there was no inconsistency between public statements made by the DPP and the recommendations contained in the Commission’s report submitted to President Christine Kangaloo last November.
Lynch stated that consistent with the statement issued by DPP Roger Gaspard, SC on July 31, the Commission’s report in itself does not itself constitute evidence for the purpose of laying any charge of manslaughter, as observed by the DPP, and therefore the Commission is in agreement with the DPP’s call for a police investigation to determine if such evidence exists.
The Commission had stated that based on the evidence before it, they found that there are sufficient grounds to conclude that Paria’s negligence can be characterised as gross negligence and consequentially criminal.
However, that recommendation further stated that the Commission had concluded that while the law allows for a corporation to be charged with manslaughter, there was not a strong enough case to recommend the prosecution of any one individual.
But the Commission, in recommendation 41, also recommended to the DPP to consider charging Paria Fuel Trading Company Limited with what is commonly known as corporate manslaughter.
In responding to that recommendation, Gaspard said in his statement that he had identified that the only possible non-regulatory criminal offence which could have been committed as being manslaughter by gross negligence, and further noted that unlike the United Kingdom, there has been no statutory intervention in Trinidad and Tobago to create an offence known as corporate manslaughter.
“It is correct that in the United Kingdom there has been statutory intervention to prosecute a company for manslaughter which defines the offence of manslaughter as corporate manslaughter. In Trinidad and Tobago, while corporate manslaughter has not been codified by naming it corporate manslaughter, manslaughter committed by a company is a common law criminal offence, and that common law criminal offence can be prosecuted in accordance with the provisions of the Criminal Procedure (Corp orations) Act, Chap12:03,” Lynch said.
He noted that in Trinidad and Tobago there is a precedent in which a company was ordered by a coroner to be prosecuted for the common law offence of manslaughter.
That case, Lynch said, was in an inquest by former Coroner Nalini Singh (INQ 10 of 2008), now a High Court Judge, in which she held that there were sufficient grounds for laying an indictable charge against a local company for the common law offence of manslaughter arising out of the death of Ojomoyo Oliver who was a trespasser in its quarry and who died by drowning in an unsecured pond on the quarry site.
“The DPP recognised in his public statement that the content of the report of the Commission does not itself constitute evidence for the purpose of laying any charge of manslaughter and the DPP recognised that the police had to conduct further investigations in order to gather evidence to determine whether Paria or any individual can be prosecuted for the common law offence of manslaughter.
“Therefore, there is no inconsistency between the public statement made by the DPP and the contents and recommendations of the Report of the commission of enquiry,” Lynch said.