Eugene St. Romaine v The King
| Jurisdiction | St Lucia |
| Judge | Taylor-Alexander, J. |
| Judgment Date | 05 January 2024 |
| Neutral Citation | LC 2024 HC 1 |
| Court | High Court (Saint Lucia) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Docket Number | CASE NO. SLUHCR2009/0007 |
Her Ladyship Justice Taylor-Alexander
CASE NO. SLUHCR2009/0007
EASTERN CARIBBEAN SUPREME COURT
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
(CRIMINAL)
Ms. Kellyann Thomson together with Mr. Linton Robinson for the Crown
Mr. Alberton Richelieu, Counsel for the Defendant
The Defendant present
Eugene St. Romaine is a Defendant under an indictment for the death by unlawful harm of Verlinda Joseph whose lifeless body was discovered on the 2 nd of December 2002 at Calise Laborie, over 20 years ago. The Defendant was indicted on the 29 th of December 2009, and he entered a plea of not guilty on the 15 th of March 2010. He was arrested on the 2 nd of April 2004, and was on bail from the 30 th of May 2012. This case has had a long history before the Court, and this application is the fourth application challenging the constitutionality of the continuing proceedings. The case remains unresolved.
After a constitutional motion filed by the Defendant was struck out on the 27 th of May 2021, the matter was scheduled before the Criminal Court for pre trial case managed and in April 2022, a fixture for trial was given with directions for the continuing management of the case. The instant application was filed by the Defendant on the 12 th of May 2022. The application is again pursuant section 8(1) of the St. Lucia Constitution Order alleging that the Defendant's fundamental right to a fair trial within a reasonable time has been violated.
The Defendant submits that the trial should be permanently stayed for the following reasons (1) the delay between the commencement of the proceedings and his trial has been unreasonable; (2) Since the indictment was filed, important witnesses have died, particularly Yvonne Cruickshank, who determined that material recovered from the genitalia of the victim was sperm and the unavailability of Christine Ann Kimber, a forensic scientist who cannot be found and who undertook the testing that determined that the sperm found within the body of the victim, to a high degree of probability, belonged to the Defendant. The protracted delay and unavailability of these witnesses significantly affects the fairness of the trial. It would require another expert to interpret the reports and results of the unavailable experts; (3) In the case of Christine Ann Kimber, her unavailability is compounded by the fact that the laboratory notes made at the time cannot be found. These were stored at Trident Court, the laboratory where Christine Ann Kimber worked. The laboratory has since closed, and her notes cannot be obtained. These factors, the Defendant submits, compromise his defence of the proceedings and compromises the fair trial of the case.
13-year-old Verlinda Joseph was found murdered 21 years ago, on the 2 nd of December 2002, yards away from her home. She had left her home at 7:30 am that day to take her uniform to a nearby seamstress for alteration. The Defendant was arrested on the 2 nd of April 2004, 19 years ago. He was committed to stand trial on the 16 th of February, 2007, following a prolonged Preliminary Inquiry in the Magistrate Court, and was indicted on 29 th December, 2009 by way of a single count indictment alleging that on 2 nd December, 2002, at Saltibus in the quarter of Laborie, he did intentionally cause the death of Verlinda Joseph by unlawful harm contrary to section 170 of the Criminal Code 1992.
Since the matter was filed at the High Court, three (3) constitutional motions have been filed and determined.
The first motion was filed in SLUHCV2009/0890 on the 27 th of October 2009, five years after the Defendant had been arrested and charged. The Defendant challenged his continued detention without trial and submitted that his continued detention was unconstitutional and was tantamount to torture, inhumane and degrading treatment. The application was not granted but the Director of Public Prosecutions was directed to take all necessary action to ensure that the case was set down at the next sitting of the assizes.
The second motion was filed in SLUHCV2010/1100 on the 11 th of February 2011, just under seven years after the Defendant had been arrested and charged and one year and two months after the first motion concluded. The Declarations sought were pursuant to section 8 (1) of the Constitution. The motion and declarations were denied and the matter was referred to the Criminal Division for case management in preparation for trial.
The third motion was filed in SLUHCV2019/0070 on the 19 th of February 2019 just under fifteen years after the Defendant had been arrested and charged, and 7 years after the conclusion of the second motion. The motion was struck out, and despite an acknowledgement that the state was tardy in prosecuting the claim, the court found that the claim was not unmeritorious or unreasonable.
The fourth application is the present application. The relief sought in the new application filed is similar in many respects to the relief in the earlier applications.
It is important at this juncture to note two relevant developments since the determination of the third constitutional motion. (1) the decision of the Court of Appeal in in Urban St. Brice v The Attorney General of St. Lucia SLUHCVAP2018/0036 where a similar motion was determined of a man charged with Murder in 2002, whose charge by 2018 had not been disposed of and (2) St. Lucia's accession to the Caribbean Court of Justice as its final appellate court, which makes decisions of that court on similar questions binding as opposed to persuasive authority. Both the dicta in St. Brice and the decision from the CCJ 1 establish that even where an accused person causes or contributes to delay, a time could eventually be reached where a court may be obliged to conclude that notwithstanding the conduct of the accused, the overall delay has been too great to resist a finding that there has been a breach of the guarantee of trial within a reasonable time.
The Crown submits in response to the Defendant's application that their evidence establishes that Defendant was connected to the Murder of Verlinda after forensic testing revealed that his sperm was detected on the cervical swabs that had been taken from Verlinda at the time of her death. The Crown acknowledges that the case is one of circumstantial evidence, and its case relies heavily on the evidence of the Crown's experts.
The Crown submits that there is no compelling evidence to demonstrate that it is impossible to have a fair trial. They assert that the Defendant is largely responsible for the delay of over 18 years, but notwithstanding, they accept that there is a prima facie breach of the Applicants right to a fair trial within a reasonable time, whether he has been prejudiced by the delay or not. The dicta of Baptiste JA in Urban St. Brice v The Attorney General SLUHCVAP2018/0036 was relied on.
The Crown nevertheless submits that the right to a trial without undue delay is not a right not to be tried after undue delay. They submit that the reasonable time guarantee under Section 8 (1) of the St. Lucia Constitution Order is not to permit the accused person to escape trial but to prevent him from remaining in limbo for
a protracted period and to ensure that there is efficient disposition of pending charges. The Crown therefore submits that a permanent stay should not be granted based on delay alone, unless in all the circumstances it is unfair to try the DefendantThe Crown submits that a fair trial is still possible despite the absence of Yvonne Cruickshank and Christine Anne Kimber, who are the forensic scientists who analyzed the DNA recovered from the body of the deceased. Price Findlay J as she then was, on the 25 th of July 2015, ordered the prosecution to file its application to have the depositions tendered during the trial. She further ordered Jonathan Whitaker who had worked alongside Christine Anne Kimber to be called to explain Christine Anne Kimber's report. Further orders were made for the Defendant to secure his own forensic expert in the person of Monte Millar and all forensic reports and data relied on by the Crown was ordered to be disclosed on him. A report should have been prepared which would have assisted the Defence in formulating questions for the experts on the collection, transmission and testing of the DNA and to point out any weakness to the jury that there might be in the evidence.
The Crown submits that unavailability of the witnesses notwithstanding, the right to cross examine a witness at trial is not an absolute right, and there will be a forensic expert who worked alongside the expert, albeit not the expert herself, to whom questions can be put on any technical issue on which knowledge is not common. They submit that as the Defence will be calling their own expert, any weaknesses in the DNA evidence could be addressed by their expert.
The Crown submits that a permanent stay of the proceedings is a remedy of last resort and a more appropriate remedy in this case for the inordinate delay is a direction for the speedy trial of the matter.
The guarantee of a right to a trial within a reasonable time is found in Section 8 of the St. Lucia Constitution Order. The Constitutions of most Commonwealth jurisdictions contain similar provisions. The importance of the provision is to ensure that a person does not remain too long in a state of uncertainty about his fate before the courts. It is directed primarily toward excessive procedural delays in the conduct of a prosecution, recognising the stigmatization, loss of privacy, stress and anxiety created on a Defendant by the cloud of suspicion that accompanies criminal proceedings....
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