Man freed after alleged jail confession collapses

Derek Achong

A man ac­cused of mur­der based sole­ly on a con­fes­sion al­leged­ly made to a con­vict­ed killer he shared a prison cell with has been freed af­ter spend­ing 16 years on re­mand.

Shel­don Fras­er was dis­charged by Jus­tice De­van Ram­per­sad on Mon­day af­ter pros­e­cu­tors of­fered no ev­i­dence against him.

Fras­er and Ra­j­nath Bridglal were ac­cused of mur­der­ing Sunil “Pep” Sookdeo dur­ing a botched rob­bery at his poul­try de­pot in Point Fortin on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2009.

Po­lice al­leged Fras­er con­fessed to mur­der con­vict Si­mon Ovid while on re­mand in 2010. How­ev­er, dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in 2015 and again at tri­al, Ovid de­nied Fras­er ever con­fessed to him and sug­gest­ed a po­lice of­fi­cer fab­ri­cat­ed the state­ment at­trib­uted to him.

Pros­e­cu­tors lat­er said they were un­able to lo­cate the of­fi­cer who al­leged­ly record­ed the state­ment, as he was be­lieved to be out­side the coun­try.

Fras­er main­tained his in­no­cence through­out the case.

Bridglal pre­vi­ous­ly plead­ed guilty to felony mur­der and was sen­tenced to 18 years in prison. He was cred­it­ed for time spent on re­mand and is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in about two years and eight months.

Des­ti­nee Gray and Maki­ra Mendez rep­re­sent­ed the DPP's Of­fice. Tyler Marie Lee-King al­so rep­re­sent­ed Fras­er.