Appeal Court widens guidelines on oral admissions by suspects
OTHER arms of the protective services, apart from the police, are being encouraged to modify and adapt their operational procedures as it relates to suspects' oral admissions.
The advice came from Appeal Court judges Mark Mohammed, Gillian Lucky and Malcolm Holdip on Tuesday, as they expanded the guidelines enunciated in the precedent-setting decision of Frankie Boodram in 2003 to include other security agencies, not only the police.
In the Boodram judgment, the Appeal Court directed police officers to make contemporaneous notes of oral admissions and utterances by suspects which should be read over to the speaker and signed by them, since they could be used as evidence. It also advises police officers to enter these admissions in their pocket or station diaries.
These guidelines have now been expanded to other security agencies, including the Coast Guard, and were made in an appeal by convicted drug trafficker Peter Coltes, 63, who was sentenced to almost 15 years of hard labour at his second trial in 2019.
The appeal was dismissed and his sentence was affirmed.
Coltes was held by the Coast Guard on July 29, 2006, off the Chaguaramas coast, after it received a call about a vessel travelling from Venezuela to Trinidad.
After leaving headquarters at Staubles Bay in an interceptor, coastguardsmen spotted the 30-foot pirogue and stopped abruptly alongside it. There were two men in the pirogue – Coltes, who was piloting the pirogue, and another man.
The coastguardsmen signalled to them to stop, but the pirogue sped off and while pursuing the boat, the officers saw one of the men throwing two black garbage bags into the water.
Eventually, the coastguardsmen were able to stop the pirogue between Centipede Island and the mainland. They also collected the two garbage bags and told Coltes and the other man to board the Coast Guard boat, the Midnight Express.
Coltes admitted to the Coast Guard there was marijuana in the bags and the men were taken to Staubles Bay, while the pirogue was towed there. The coastguardsmen inspected the bags and called the police.
When questioned, Coltes told the police: “Boss that is mine. When I see the Coast Guard, I get frightened and throw it overboard.”
The marijuana found in the bags weighed 37.6 kilogrammes.
Coltes’s defence was that the case against him was fabricated.
At his appeal, argued by attorney John Heath, he advanced two grounds of appeal. His first related to the lack of contemporaneous notes made by the Coast Guard officers, and since the Boodram guidelines were only directed to the police, the judge wrongly placed the evidence of the coastguardsmen and the police on the oral utterance on the same footing.
It was for this reason, although finding no merit to the ground of appeal, that the court expanded the Boodram guidelines to include the Coast Guard, pointing out “there will be instances in which confessions and/or admissions are made to persons who are not police officers.”
The judges also clarified the element of actual and constructive possession as it relates to the Dangerous Drugs Act.
They overturned the Appeal Court’s previous decision in Coltes case.
At the appeal of his first trial, the Court of Appeal held that section 21 of the Act was applicable. At his second trial, the judge applied section 21 in keeping with the findings of the appellate court.
On Tuesday, the Appeal Court said the judge was wrong to apply section 21.
They said the word “found” should be given its clear, usual and ordinary meaning as provided for in section 21 of the act.
However, they pointed out that Coltes was charged under section 5(4), which provides that anyone who trafficks a dangerous drug or has a dangerous drug in his/her possession for the purpose of trafficking is guilty of an offence.
They said once the jury found that the bags containing the drugs were found in the sea were the same bags thrown off the pirogue, that was sufficient circumstantial evidence to suggest Coltes was in constructive possession of the drugs.
“The meaning of the word possession as it appears in section 5(4) would therefore have been satisfied.”
They disagreed with a suggestion by the State that the word “found” meant “discovered,” and so the drugs found in the bags in the sea satisfied the meaning of the word “found.”
Lucky, who delivered the decision, said while an attractive argument, it stretched the use of the word “found” beyond the laws of elasticity and would result in a legal absurdity.
“This court is therefore bound to ensure that section 21 (1) operates within the remit for which it was intended.”
The judges held that the jury, having found Coltes was in possession of the drugs, based on circumstantial evidence, would not have needed to consider whether he proved he had no knowledge of and did not consent to the drugs being on the boat.
Lucky said in this case, section 21 was not applicable and should not have been used as a route to a verdict by the judge, but accepting the drugs were in the boat before being thrown into the sea meant the jury’s finding of guilt was unaffected by the reversal of the burden of proof on possession.
In deciding if to apply the proviso which allows a court to dismiss an appeal although a ground of challenge finds favour, Lucky said while the court did find the trial judge erred in directing the jury on section 21, no substantial miscarriage of justice occurred.
At the end of the hearing, the judges said because of the importance of their decision, they will issue it in writing, given that they have extended the Frankie Boodram guidelines, and because of the application of section 21.
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"Appeal Court widens guidelines on oral admissions by suspects"