Mom and 3 daughters freed

JUSTICE Herbert Volney yesterday found no validity in an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to indict a 55-year-old woman and her three daughters for wounding a Couva man — an incident in which the mother and her daughters served varying jail sentences for killing the man’s mother. After delivering a written judgment in the San Fernando First Assizes, Justice Volney set free the mother, Dianne Davies, and her daughters, Marika, 25, Dimisha, 24, and Sascha, 22. Justice Volney stated that the powers of the DPP “was neither absolute nor exercisable capriciously but in accordance with settled practice and recognisable juridical constraints.”

In 1999, Davies and her daughters were tried for murdering Sheriffa Ali on January 23, 1997, and pleaded guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter. Trial judge Justice Kenny Persad imposed varying sentences, with daughter Sascha serving four years and Dianne and the other daughters serving three. However, almost a year ago while serving the last month of the sentence, the mother and her daughters were served with notices by the DPP to answer charges of wounding Dexter Ali. The stabbing of Ali arose out of an incident in which the mother and her three daughters killed Ali’s mother, Sheriffa. The State sought to now prosecute the mother and her daughters for wounding Ali because State attorneys said  it was an “oversight” that the four women were not previously given the opportunity to plea to the lesser offence of wounding. Attorney Prakash Ramadhar, representing the mother and her daughters, previously contended that it was an abuse of process to further prosecute the women.

The wounding charge which the DPP is seeking to have them indicted, Ramadhar submitted, arose out of the killing incident for which the mother and her daughters have already been sentenced, and it is an abuse of process to further prosecute. Justice Volney respon-ded  yesterday: “It is here that learned counsel for the accused has with great industry canvassed the submission that the DPP has crossed the line, acted capriciously and filed an indictment that is both irregular as being unsupported at law, and certainly, as abuse of process of the Court.”