Two to stand trial after cases restarted

TWO men whose cases were left unfinished by former chief magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar and which restarted last year, were yesterday committed to stand trial.

The men had consented to have their cases start afresh by Chief Magistrate Maria Busby Earle-Caddle although there was some confusion as to the status of the cases left unfinished by her predecessor.

The issue was settled last week by a high court judge who said all the cases in limbo will have to start over. The two, along with several others, however, had already agreed to have their cases begin over. In a ruling yesterday, Earle-Caddle held that a prima facie case had been made out against Desron Nero and Sayeed Albert who are charged with murdering Keyon Alleyne, and shooting with intent to murder another man on November 11, 2011.

Next week, two other cases which were also affected when Ayers-Caesar was elevated to the high court bench and her subsequent resignation, will start over.

One of the matters to restart next week is that of Chickie Portillo, Kareem Gomez, Levi Joseph, Anthony Charles and Israel “Arnold” Lara who were among those prisoners who rioted at the magistrates’ court in April 2017, when they were told their almost decade-long preliminary inquiry was one of those that had to be restarted. Portillo and the others were charged with the murder of Cepep worker Russell Antoine on Covigne Road, Diego Martin, on May 13, 2010. Their preliminary inquiry is set to begin on January 21, while the other will restart the next day.

In that matter, Nigel Myers and his co-accused Miguel Roberts and Nick “Skinnies” Noriega had to be forcibly removed from the holding cell of the Port-of-Spain Eighth Court, also in April 2017, after they began cursing when they were told their matter would have to restart.

They are charged with murdering a shopkeeper in Morvant in 2010. After Ayers-Caesar resigned in April 2017, days after she was appointed a judge, it was discovered she left 53 cases unfinished. Some of them were almost a decade old.

Ayers-Caesar has since filed a lawsuit claiming she did not resign voluntarily, but was forced to do so because of the discrepancy in the number of part-heard matters she left behind. She also said she did not intend to mislead the Chief Justice about the number of matters she had outstanding but that those cases “could easily have been dealt with by another magistrate” as the law provided for it.

Justice Carol Gobin, last week, said the law did not contemplate continuation of a part-heard matter by a magistrate other than the one who started it.