Two men freed of murder as State offers no evidence in case

Two men charged with mur­der were dis­charged by the High Court dur­ing a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing yes­ter­day, af­ter the State re­fused to ten­der any ev­i­dence to prove the charges against them.

Nicholas Davis, of Sou Sou Lands, To­ba­go, and An­to­nio Mc Each­nie, of Laven­tille, ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi charged with two counts of mur­der in 2019.

The men were charged with the 2019 mur­der of To­ba­go cou­ple John Mills, 69, and Eu­lyn John, 61, both of Buc­coo, To­ba­go. Their bod­ies were dis­cov­ered at their home on May 2, 2019. The men were ar­rest­ed in 2022.

Dur­ing the course of the pro­ceed­ings, the State was grant­ed sev­er­al ex­ten­sions of time to file the ev­i­dence they in­tend­ed to re­ly up­on and filed over 50 state­ments in the mat­ter. The pros­e­cu­tors al­so made an ap­pli­ca­tion to have a wit­ness called to give oral ev­i­dence, as the wit­ness re­fused to swear to her state­ment.

At the start of the pro­ceed­ings, how­ev­er, de­fence coun­sel ob­ject­ed to ma­te­ri­als that were served af­ter the dead­lines set by the court. They ar­gued that it was served ‘mere days be­fore the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing’ and they did not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view it be­fore the hear­ing. The de­fence al­so ob­ject­ed to any fur­ther ex­ten­sions of time, not­ing sev­er­al ex­ten­sions were giv­en to the State since the ini­tial hear­ing of the mat­ter.

Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi ruled that the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing would com­mence and that all ma­te­ri­als filed with­in the last dead­lines set would be ad­mis­si­ble and that time would be grant­ed to the de­fence to make any ob­jec­tions or sub­mis­sions. Two state­ments that were filed past the time dead­line were not al­lowed to be used.

When the hear­ing be­gan and the charges were read to the ac­cused, the State re­fused to ten­der any of the state­ments filed and served against the men.

With no ev­i­dence be­fore the court to sub­stan­ti­ate the al­le­ga­tions, Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi dis­charged them.

Mc Each­nie was rep­re­sent­ed by Alex­ia Romero and Andiesa Weste, while Davis was rep­re­sent­ed by Is­rael Khan SC and Aris­sa Ma­haraj. Kernester Mo­hammed and Mark Pe­ters rep­re­sent­ed the State.