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Contact:
John Emmanuel
Tuesday, February 03, 2004 - The February Criminal Assizes opened on
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2004 at the High Court in Castries with twenty-eight
cases listed. Among the homicide cases are three murder cases, two cases of man
slaughter, one case of attempted murder and one case of death by dangerous
driving.
Incidents of sexual offences include three cases of rape, one case of attempted
rape, and five cases of unlawful carnal knowledge. The criminal assizes will
also hear twelve cases of violence ranging from grievous harm, using a cutlass,
knife or fire arm with intent to cause wounds.
Acting Director of Public Prosecutors Victoria Charles-Clark says the intention
is to get through all the cases dependent on large measure, on the co-operation
of all parties namely witnesses, jurors, lawyers and the police. She has assured
of her office dedication to the task of prosecuting the persons before the court
despite a seemingly heavy workload. The acting DPP says “As usual we do our best
and we have in the past been able to complete a list of that volume of cases and
I believe we will try our best to do so in this case. However, we know our
resources are scarce and we could have had a heavier list providing we had more
personnel at this office.”
She went on to explain the comparatively small number of homicides cases on this
year’s list, as compared to actual incidents over the past years.
She says it is the result of a “slow progression of cases from the Magistrate’s
Court to the High Court and I think with the introduction of paper committal
that problem will be circumvented and we will have a lot more murder cases on
the list for assizes.”
The presiding judge will be Justice Indra Hariprashad-Charles.
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