Decision on Wednesday

State prosecutor Wayne Rajbansie completed his address  to the jury yesterday in the Clint Huggins murder trial, bring an end to addresses by both defence and prosecuting attorneys.  And when the matter resumes on Wednesday next, Justice Alice Yorke Soo-Hon will start her summation of the case to the jury, reviewing the evidence and giving them instructions on the law. She told the jury that she would have to be very meticulous in her summation because of the length of the case and the amount of evidence involved.

However, yesterday she gave them some instructions on certain issues, some of which she intends to repeat on Wednesday. She warned them not to discuss the case with anybody who is not a member of their panel, and if at this point they do discuss the case  among themselves, they must not  come to any conclusion until she finally sums up the case on Wednesday. She notified them that they must assess the facts of the case  not in  a cold and calculated way but objectively. Her further instruction was not  to lump the three accused defences together but to compartmentalised  them and look at each defence separately because each defendant has presented a different case.

Arnold Huggins, Leslie Huggins and Junior Phillip are before the Port-of-Spain Third Criminal Court charged with the murder of Clint. The State’s evidence is that the three men plotted and killed Clint during the early morning of February 20, 1996 - a Carnival Tuesday. They did this for a $3M contract put out on Clint by Joey Ramiah, one of several men charged with Dole Chadee for murder. Arnold, who is represented by Ian Stuart Brooks, is claiming that he was never at the scene of the crime and in fact was at his in-laws’ home in Balandra, and that the statement he gave  was under pressure and licks by the police.

Leslie, who is represented by Keith Scotland and Dawn Mohan, said  he did not kill Clint and that at the time of the murder he was at home sleeping with his wife Swarsattie Maharaj, and that the statement he gave to the police  denying having anything to do with Clint’s murder is true. He is also claiming that Maharaj, who became the State’s key witness, had good reason to lie on him because he was horning her. Phillip, whose counsel is Obsourne Charles SC, said he was home at the time and that the police set him up. He said he was tricked by the police into signing a statement which he thought was another document. And further, the police induced him to sign by saying they would grant him immunity.