Four freed of real estate agent's 2005 murder, judge slams prosecutors

Almost two decades after they were charged, four men, one of whom was an ex-Defence Force special-forces soldier, have been freed of the 2005 murder of real estate agent Gerald Gopaul.

Initially, eight men went on trial in February 2020, before Justice Norton Jack and a 12-member jury at the Hall of Justice, Port of Spain.

Jury trials were halted as one of the measures to protect staff and other court users at the start of the covid19 pandemic in March 2020. The trial before Jack was one of the first casualties of the lockdown measure, although when restrictions were lifted, four men pleaded guilty to felony murder. Their sentencing was held in camera to protect the remaining accused men since their trial was yet to be completed, in preservation of the integrity of the trial.

Paul Boodoo, Cpl Richardo Stevenson, the ex-special forces soldier, Martin Crichlow and Sherwin Crystom were the remaining four men on trial for Gopaul’s murder.

The trial resumed afresh in January before Justice Nalini Singh at the Hall of Justice, Port of Spain.

Gopaul, 52, was abducted from the Diamond Recreation Club, Diamond Village, and his body was found 11 days later at Trantrill Road, St Augustine, wrapped in green plastic.

Ex-soldier Jason Percival, who was originally charged with the others, had turned state's witness.

In a 159-page ruling, Singh ordered the release of the remaining four after finding there was no evidence to support a conviction and that the prosecution’s conduct had irreparably tainted the fairness of the trial.

Boodoo, Stevenson, Crichlow and Crystom were all freed after Singh upheld their no-case submissions and granted permanent stays of proceedings on multiple grounds, including abuse of process, failure to investigate exculpatory evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct.

It was Defence Minister Wayne Sturge’s last case before he was appointed a minister in April. He represented Crichlow along with Randal Raphael, Danielle Rampersad and Enrique Singh.

Evans Welch represented Boodoo. Pamela Elder, SC, and Owen Hinds Jr represented Stevenson. Mario Merritt represented Crystom.

In 2023, Stevenson pleaded with the authorities to have his trial restarted and maintained he would not plead guilty to crimes he did not commit.

Stevenson and six others were previously charged with kidnapping and murdering US war veteran Balram “Balo” Maharaj. The charges for the two murders and kidnappings were laid against him in 2006.

In the Maharaj case, five men were extradited to the US to stand trial for Maharaj's kidnapping and murder, as he was a US citizen. The indictment against Stevenson for Maharaj’s murder was discontinued in 2014 before then-High Court judge Maria Wilson.

In her ruling on the no-case submissions and abuse of process applications, Singh said there was no evidential foundation for the charge of murder under either joint enterprise or felony-murder.

“The court concludes that there was no evidence from which a properly directed jury could infer that the accused men intended to kill or to cause grievous bodily harm to the victim, Gerald Gopaul.

“The evidence demonstrates only that they participated in the initial abduction, but beyond that, there is an evidential void.

“There was no indication that the accused maintained any involvement after the abduction itself…So, what little evidence that existed post-abduction suggests the accused expected the victim to remain alive for ransom negotiations, a fact wholly inconsistent with any murderous intent.

“As such, the court finds that there is no evidential foundation for establishing liability against the four accused under the common law doctrine of joint enterprise murder,” Singh said.

Judge: Prosecutors 'abused court's processes'

Central to the prosecution’s case was the testimony of Jason Percival, a confessed criminal and accomplice who admitted under oath in prior proceedings to multiple kidnappings and a conspiracy to murder.

Percival was also a former soldier.

In his testimony, he claimed to be present during the planning stages and when Gopaul, 52, was snatched from a bar near his Diamond Village, San Fernando, home, on July 8, 2005.

Singh ruled that Percival’s evidence was “so compromised in its quality” that no jury could be safely asked to rely on it.

She said his testimony was riddled with contradictions, material omissions, implausibilities, and admissions of dishonesty, including a stated willingness to lie to avoid life imprisonment.

“This is not merely a matter of evidential weakness,” the judge held. “It is a fundamental issue of fairness and integrity.”

The judge also condemned the state’s reliance on Percival’s testimony.

“Even taken at its highest, Jason Percival’s evidence is so tenuous that no properly directed jury could safely convict upon it.”

She also faulted prosecutors' failure to disclose US transcripts detailing his admissions under oath in the Maharaj trial, including a deliberate lie to the FBI in an interview, saying it reflected “a disregard for the prosecutorial duty to ensure that the proceedings are fair not only in outcome but in process.”

“What has occurred in this case reflects a breach of that responsibility.

“It cannot be overstated that this prosecutorial duty is qualitatively distinct from the jury’s role in assessing credibility. The prosecutor is required to evaluate in advance whether the evidence is sufficiently reliable to justify asking a jury to perform that function at all...

“In this case, the continued reliance on Jason Percival despite his admitted dishonesty, and his outstanding criminal matters in which he implicated himself and maintains criminal exposure, and the prosecution’s failure to disclose those admissions until they were specifically requested, introduces not just prejudice, but a distortion of the process.”

In his testimony, Percival sought to downplay his involvement, characterising himself merely as an observer of the events surrounding Gopaul’s kidnapping and death.

However, it was pointed out by the defence that this was directly contradicted by prior statements attributed to him in the US proceedings, which reveal that he was not a passive participant but a central architect of the criminal enterprise.

According to Singh, the US transcripts were obtained by the defence. She said it highlighted a “concerning lack of prosecutorial compliance” to disclose the material from inception.

“Thus, the abuse lies not in what the defence was ultimately able to achieve with what they were eventually able to get, but in what the prosecution failed to do. The trial process must not only be fair in outcome, it must be seen to have been fair in operation.

“A prosecution that fails to make timely disclosure, especially in a case of this gravity, offends the integrity of the judicial process. Accordingly, I am satisfied that the prosecution’s conduct constitutes an abuse of the court’s process.”

Apart from upholding the no-case submission and ruling in favour of the abuse-of-process application, the judge went further, granting a permanent stay of proceedings for all four men. This means they cannot be prosecuted again for the crimes.

“If this matter were permitted to go to the jury, the outcome would be that the court would be seen as endorsing a prosecution built entirely upon the testimony of a witness who has previously and openly admitted to lying under similar pressures, and who continues to enjoy prosecutorial immunity that sustains his incentive to lie.

“This would signal to the public that the judicial process is willing to forget about truth, so long as a conviction is secured. That appearance alone would erode public confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system.

“If the court were to sanction such a process, it would send a message that the judiciary is prepared to overlook serious prosecutorial lapses…The result would be a conviction or perhaps a not guilty verdict, which would have been arrived at through a process that is fundamentally tainted.

“That, in turn, would leave the justice system vulnerable to legitimate criticism that it fails to uphold the safeguards intended to prevent misuse of its processes, and that it is willing to risk injustice under the guise of jury determination.

“In this case, the jury would be invited not to assess a case, but to resolve a prosecution that should never have been allowed to reach them in the first place. Such a delegation of judicial responsibility would amount to a dereliction of duty on the court’s part.”

She added, “A stay of proceedings is a remedy of last resort, invoked only when no lesser measure can safeguard the integrity of the trial. In this case, that threshold is met.”

“The court has a duty to prevent a trial where the process itself is offensive to justice. This is such a case.

“The more egregious the State conduct, the greater the need for the court to disassociate itself from it,” Justice Singh stressed. “To permit this trial to continue would not only be unfair, it would make a mockery of the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

For Stevenson, the judge also pointed to the police’s failure to investigate his alibi, their misconduct in his interview and the denial of a fair opportunity to challenge Percival’s testimony. She also held that prosecutorial misconduct was a factor in granting the stay for all four.