The State has been granted permission to appeal the decisions of a High Court judge and the Court of Appeal to free a police officer, who accidentally shot and killed a man while executing a search warrant at his home in 2003, of manslaughter.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) was yesterday granted leave to appeal to the Privy Council, almost two months after the Appeal Court dismissed its appeal in the case of PC Kerry Samad.
Delivering a majority ruling on April 12, Appellate Judges Alice Yorke-Soo Hon and Mark Mohammed ruled that Samad’s trial judge was correct in not allowing the jury to deliberate in the case as prosecutors failed to prove a prima facie case against Samad due to major inconsistencies in evidence.
“In this case, the direct evidence and the medical evidence are in violent conflict. Before getting to the stage of inviting the jury to consider the evidence, the prosecution must have established a prima facie case.
“The difficulty for the prosecution is that they were unable to pass this first hurdle because there was a material defect in that they were unable to produce any evidence to support the trajectory of the bullet and explain the exact manner in which the deceased met his death,” Yorke-Soo Hon said.
Yorke-Soo Hon noted that there were inconsistencies with three eyewitness of the incident and the pathologist who performed the autopsy on the victim- Bernard Albarado.
Appellate Judge Rajendra Narine also sat on the appeal panel but delivered a dissenting judgement, in which he claimed the judge was wrong.
Albarado, a pipe fitter, was killed after being shot once as police executed a search warrant at his George Street, Cunupia, home on February 5, 2003.
According to Samad, the uzi sub-machine he was carrying during the raid, accidentally discharged as he tripped and fell while traversing Albarado’s property.
The victim’s wife, Sharon, testified that here husband was shot as he was got up to answer the door for the police. The bullet struck Albarado in his back, exited his body and was lodged in a washing machine. Two other witnesses gave varying accounts of the incident.
In his post-mortem report forensic pathologist Dr Hughvon Des Vignes ruled that the bullet entered the left side of Albarado’s body and moved in an upward trajectory through his body and before striking the washing machine.
Samad was charged with unlawful killing (manslaughter) at the end of a corner’s inquest into Albarado’s death which ended in December 2004. Samad has been on suspension from the T&T Police Service since first being charged.
During his trial in 2015, Justice Gillian Lucky upheld a no case submission made by his attorneys.
Samad was represented by Richard Mason, while Travers Sinanan represented the DPP’s office.
