Murder conviction overturned and man freed

Derek Achong

The Court of Ap­peal has or­dered the re­lease of a man whose mur­der con­vic­tion was based on the ev­i­dence of his cousin.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port of Spain yes­ter­day, Ap­pel­late Jus­tices Mark Mo­hammed, Gillian Lucky and Ricky Rahim up­held Adim "Psy­cho" Re­ece's ap­peal against his con­vic­tion.

The pan­el de­clined to or­der a re­tri­al be­cause Re­ece's cousin, Sher­man Lam­bkin, whose ev­i­dence formed the ba­sis of the case against him, was mur­dered dur­ing a home in­va­sion in April.

Re­ece was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing De­von Poptee on De­cem­ber 26, 2005.

Lam­bkin tes­ti­fied that Re­ece vis­it­ed him and oth­er rel­a­tives in Va­len­cia and asked him and a friend to iden­ti­fy a group of men who had stabbed him a lit­tle over a week ear­li­er.

He said they sub­se­quent­ly met Poptee, whom he de­scribed as a friend, near a bridge.

Ac­cord­ing to Lam­bkin, Re­ece asked Poptee to help iden­ti­fy his at­tack­ers, and Poptee led them along a track to­wards a riv­er.

Lam­bkin said Re­ece in­struct­ed him and his friend to walk ahead while he re­mained be­hind with Poptee.

He claimed he saw Poptee stoop­ing down be­fore hear­ing a gun­shot. Lam­bkin al­so al­leged that Re­ece threat­ened him and his friend, warn­ing them against speak­ing about what they had wit­nessed be­fore they left the area.

Res­i­dents found Poptee's body the fol­low­ing morn­ing. An au­top­sy re­vealed that he had been shot in the head.

Lam­bkin was even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed by po­lice but was re­leased af­ter im­pli­cat­ing his cousin.

Homi­cide de­tec­tives ob­tained a war­rant for Re­ece's ar­rest, which was ex­e­cut­ed more than a year and a half lat­er.

Re­ece was con­vict­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2022 fol­low­ing a judge-alone tri­al be­fore for­mer High Court judge, now Ap­pel­late Jus­tice, Car­la Brown-An­toine.

Dur­ing the ap­peal, Re­ece's lawyer Daniel Khan, of Justi­tia Om­nibus Cham­bers, suc­cess­ful­ly ar­gued that the tri­al judge had failed to prop­er­ly con­sid­er whether Lam­bkin had an in­ter­est to serve when he im­pli­cat­ed his cousin.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed found that the judge had placed un­due re­liance on po­lice of­fi­cers' ev­i­dence that Lam­bkin had been cleared as a sus­pect, as well as the fact that he was not ques­tioned about fab­ri­cat­ing the case against Re­ece dur­ing the tri­al.

He al­so found that the judge should have con­sid­ered Lam­bkin's con­nec­tion to Re­ece's al­leged ef­forts to find the men who had at­tacked him. The judge should al­so have tak­en in­to ac­count that Lam­bkin on­ly co­op­er­at­ed with po­lice af­ter he was de­tained as a sus­pect.

"There was a suf­fi­cient ev­i­den­tial foun­da­tion that Sher­man Lam­bkin may have pos­sessed an im­prop­er mo­tive," Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

In con­sid­er­ing whether a re­tri­al was ap­pro­pri­ate, the pan­el agreed with Re­ece's oth­er lawyer, Michelle Gon­za­les, who ques­tioned the State's abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cute the case with­out Lam­bkin.

While Gon­za­les ac­cept­ed As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions An­ju Bho­la's sub­mis­sion that the State could re­ly on tran­scripts of Lam­bkin's tes­ti­mo­ny from the first tri­al, she point­ed out that Lam­bkin could no longer an­swer per­ti­nent ques­tions about the truth­ful­ness of his al­le­ga­tions against Re­ece, which arose dur­ing the ap­peal.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed said: "There would be a grave dis­ad­van­tage that would skew the fair­ness of a re­tri­al."

The de­ci­sion meant Re­ece was to be re­leased im­me­di­ate­ly. He par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ap­peal from prison via video con­fer­ence.

The pan­el al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that the de­fence at­tor­neys who rep­re­sent­ed Re­ece at his tri­al had opt­ed not to make sub­mis­sions at an En­zor hear­ing, be­fore the judge con­sid­ered the ev­i­dence and de­liv­ered her ver­dict.

While Jus­tice Lucky ac­knowl­edged that de­fence at­tor­neys were not tra­di­tion­al­ly re­quired to ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in such hear­ings, dur­ing which judges in­vite sub­mis­sions on im­por­tant is­sues to be con­sid­ered, she said the need for their in­volve­ment had in­creased.

"The En­zor hear­ing is about seek­ing to get it right. The En­zor is to en­sure jus­tice," Jus­tice Lucky said.

Re­ece was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Har­ry­nar­ine Singh.