By Prior Beharry
CLOSE to 1,200 people charged for murder could have applied for bail after a Court of Appeal ruling on Thursday.
But, Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi said that the State has received a stay of the ruling until March 3.
This was after the offices of the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service were inundated with inquiries concerning the granting of bail for people charged with murder.
At a virtual press conference on Friday, Al-Rawi said there were 2,410 people on remanded at the nation’s prisons.
Out of this number, 1,200 were accused of murder and 446 of them have cases at the Magistrates’ Court, 695 at the High Court and the rest have appeals at the Court of Appeal of Privy Council.
The AG said, “We have asked Court for Appeal to suspend its order.”
Al-Rawi said it was unusual for the State to ask the court to suspend an order especially when it has made a constitutional declaration.
He said an order given on Thursday was based on an application made by the AG attorney Fyard Hosein, SC. Al-Rawi said the application for conditional leave for application to the Privy Council for the state to appeal and for a stay of the application has been filed for March 3.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel headed by Chief Justice Ivory Archie stated that Section 5 (1) of the Bail Act that prohibited the granting of bail to an accused on a capital offence was inconsistent with the Constitution and should be struck out.
Archie, in a unanimous decision with Justices of Appeal Mira Dean-Armorer and Malcolm Holdip, overturned the decision of Justice Joan Charles in the High Court who had dismissed a constitutional claim by former murder accused Akilli Charles.
He contended that it was unconstitutional for a murder accused to be automatically be denied bail.
Charles was freed after his attorneys filed a no-case submission in May 2019. The no-case submission was upheld by Chief Magistrate Maria Busby-Earle Caddle after she agreed that there was not enough evidence to proceed to trial.
