Judge Volney to decide mother’s, daughters’ fates

JUSTICE Herbert Volney will deliver a written judgement on whether or not a 55-year-old mother and her three daughters should be prosecuted for wounding a Couva man in an incident in which the mother and her daughters served varying jail sentences for killing the man’s mother.

The mother Dianne Davies, is facing Justice Volney in the San Fernando Criminal Assizes with wounding Dexter Ali, 35, of June Street, Couva. Her daughters, Marika, 25, Dimisha, 24, and Sascha, 22, have been served with notices by the Director of Public Prosecutions to answer the said charge. The stabbing of Ali on January 23, 1997, arose out of an incident in which the mother and her three daughters killed Ali’s mother, Sheriffa. In 1999, Davies and her daughters were tried for the murder, but pleaded guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter. Justice Kenny Persad who presided over the murder trial, imposed varying sentences, daughter Sascha was given a four-year sentence while Dianne and the other two daughters served three years each. The State is now seeking to prosecute the mother and her daughters for wounding Ali.

Attorneys for the mother and her daughters are arguing a preliminary application before Justice Volney, on the ground that it is an abuse of process to further prosecute the women. The wounding charge which the DPP is seeking to have the four indicted, attorney Prakash Ramadhar submitted, arose out of the killing incident for which the mother and her daughters have already been sentenced. He submitted that it is an abuse of process to further prosecute.  State attorney Althea Alexis said it was an “oversight” that the four women were not previously given the opportunity to plead to the lesser offence of wounding.

It was while the women were serving the prison term, the State attorney said, that the DPP discovered that the wounding of Ali could not have arisen from the same indictment for murder. Ramadhar retorted that the facts were so intertwined they could not be separated. “Do you think the DPP can go back into old depositions and see if they can run down somebody? Where will it end?” Volney questioned. Volney said he would give his written judgement on September 17 in the First Criminal Assizes of the San Fernando High Court.