‘DPP stops a killer from going free’

THE Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had two choices where Shawn Parris was concerned. He could have continued with the prosecution on a murder indictment and faced the possibility of a killer going free because of the evidence available to him, or he could have done what he did — file a new indictment for manslaughter and get Parris to plead to it and face a long time in prison. Henderson had absolutely no comment to make when approached yesterday on his decision to discontinue the murder charge on Wednesday and re-indict Parris on the lesser count of manslaughter. But sources in the DPP Department said the DPP agonised over the decision to take the route which he eventually did. They pointed out that there was very little evidence for the prosecution apart from the confessional statement given by Parris after his extradition from the United States. Sources told Newsday that on perusal of the depositions, Parris stood a very good chance of being acquitted if the murder charge had proceeded. There was some evidence of a fingerprint impression, according to one source.

The source then added, “suppose lawyers for Parris had challenged the admissibility of the confessional statement. Suppose at the end of the voir dire the trial judge had ruled the inadmissibility of the statement. What was going to happen next? There would have been no evidence, direct or circumstantial, to prosecute Parris. The judge would then have had no choice but to direct the jury to acquit the accused. Maybe before that, the prosecutor would have had to get on his feet and offer no further evidence in the matter.” The source continued, “this would have been yet another case where an accused person walked free because of the police investigations in this matter. Apart from the statement and the fingerprint impression, there was nothing else. Imagine that, a woman is killed in broad daylight in front of a clinic, and no one came forward and said anything.”

The source pointed out that since January, 15 accused persons were acquitted by the courts on murder charges for various reasons including sloppy investigations. He asked, “was this going to be another such case? The DPP, according to the source, acting under section 90 of the Constitution, decided to discontinue the murder charge before it could get off the ground. The DPP, the source added, has that power. Under the same section, the DPP decided to re-indict Parris for manslaughter. The source indicated that Parris was willing from very early to plead guilty to manslaughter, so once his plea was accepted by the State, it was just a case of what punishment the judge would impose. “The DPP in this case ensured that a killer was jailed, rather than a killer going free because of the evidence presented to him,” the source declared. Parris, who ran away after shooting Dr Chandra Naraynsingh outside the Langmore Health Foundation Clinic on June 30,  1994, was sentenced to life imprisonment, not to be released from prison before he has served 30 years in jail.