High Court Judge Victoria Charles-Clarke has upheld submissions submitted by attorneys at law Wayne Norde and Gina Abraham who appeared in a criminal case of two counts of theft against Nadishsa Drigo-Demizene of Portsmouth.
Nadishsa Drigo-Demizene was arrested who worked at Portsmouth Animal Feed Center is alleged to have stolen stock totally EC$82,753.55 of stock and cash totally $16,382.20 between April 25, 2014 and March 7, 2015.
Norde and Abraham who represented Drigo-Demizene Pro bono (free) submitted to the court that an error committed by the presiding magistrate.
The prosecution told the court the “the breach was insufficient” to invalidate the deposition since the accused was given several opportunities to cross examine witnesses. “The breach is not grave,” the prosecution told the court.
However, Norde told the court that since the accused was not given a chance to cross examine witnesses (two of them) it was prejudicial to her
He continued, “The accused must be given an opportunity to cross examine witnesses either by self or through an attorney and that was not done.” He said. He asked the court to reject the request by the prosecution to be given “a second bite at the cherry.”
In response, Justice Charles-Clarke said, “I got nothing re submissions from the prosecution of this matter, lawyers must be able to stand on their feet and address the court, we should be at trial now, the State conceded to the application made by the defense. I gave them a second opportunity to address the court and they have failed to satisfy especially since the accused was not represented at the preliminary inquiry. I will now uphold the objection from defense counsel and declare the committal a nullity…I am not going to give the State more time.”
Since the accused was placed in the care of the jury two man and seven women, she then instructed them to return a “not guilty” verdict against the accused which they did. For Gina Abraham one of the two lawyers for the accused the omission from the magistrate’s court was fatal.
“During our review of the documents brought to us, we discovered that two of the depositions which contained witness statements (two witnesses) as transpired in the magistrates court, that the witness or the accused was not given an opportunity to cross examine the witnesses and as a result of that we made an application to the court that the said depositions were defective. Fatal to the prosecution’s case and invalid,” Abraham said.
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