A 48-year-old man want­ed in the Unit­ed States for smug­gling over US$1 mil­lion in co­caine and hero­in in­to that coun­try is now set to be ex­tra­dit­ed af­ter suf­fer­ing yet an­oth­er le­gal de­feat.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment af­ter hear­ing lengthy sub­mis­sions at the Hall of Jus­tice, Tues­day morn­ing, Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh re­ject­ed Shurlan "Chalkie" Gup­py's ap­peal over a judge's de­ci­sion to dis­miss his chal­lenge against his pro­posed ex­tra­di­tion to the US.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed, who de­liv­ered the pan­el's unan­i­mous judg­ment, said that High Court Judge Ricky Rahim could not be fault­ed for his han­dling of Gup­py's case.

"It could not be said the judge was plain­ly wrong or erred in law," Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

Gup­py filed the law­suit af­ter act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles ap­proved ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings brought by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, on be­half of the US, on Ju­ly 31, last year.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that he and his col­leagues were will­ing to up­hold an ap­pli­ca­tion from the AG's Of­fice to strike out the ap­peal based on Gup­py's lawyers fail­ing to file a record of ap­peal with­in the stip­u­lat­ed pe­ri­od.

How­ev­er, de­spite the pro­ce­dur­al is­sue, they still went on to con­sid­er the three grounds of ap­peal raised by Gup­py's le­gal team and re­ject­ed them.

They not­ed that their col­league was right to dis­miss Gup­py's claim that he was en­trapped by US law en­force­ment agents.

They stat­ed that while there was ev­i­dence that US en­force­ment agents paid him US$5,000 for a pre­vi­ous ship­ment of drugs, there was al­so ev­i­dence that he was al­leged­ly in­volved in drug traf­fick­ing be­fore the pay­ment was made in 2020.

"These were con­clu­sions rea­son­ably open to the judge based on the ma­te­r­i­al be­fore him," Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar point­ed out that while Gup­py could re­ly on en­trap­ment as a de­fence in the US, such was not ap­plic­a­ble in T&T or the Unit­ed King­dom.

"Would he not be in a bet­ter po­si­tion?" Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar asked.

The judges al­so ruled that their col­league was al­so en­ti­tled to re­ject Gup­py's claim that the US act­ed in bad faith by fail­ing to pros­e­cute his wife and fa­ther-in-law, who are US cit­i­zens, al­though there was ev­i­dence of them par­tic­i­pat­ing in the same crim­i­nal con­duct he is ac­cused of.

"There is no ev­i­dence of dif­fer­en­tial treat­ment by cit­i­zen­ship," Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

They found no mer­it in Gup­py's claim that his ex­tra­di­tion dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to fam­i­ly life based on the po­ten­tial im­pact on his son, who has autism.

They not­ed that his son, who moved from the US to live with him in Trinidad, would have more ac­cess to spe­cialised ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes for his med­ical con­di­tion if he re­turned to live with his moth­er in the US.

"It is in the best in­ter­est of the child to re­turn to the US," Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the judg­ment was de­liv­ered, Gup­py's lawyer Mario Mer­ritt sought to ap­ply for a stay of his ex­tra­di­tion to give him time to con­sid­er a pos­si­ble fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

He not­ed that US of­fi­cials were present in court and would seek to ex­e­cute Gup­py's ex­tra­di­tion if the court's de­ci­sion stood.

The im­promp­tu ap­pli­ca­tion was swift­ly re­ject­ed by the ap­peal pan­el, who not­ed that he failed to prove that Gup­py had valid grounds to claim such.

The judges were al­so care­ful to note that the coun­try's fi­nal ap­pel­late court would on­ly over­turn con­cur­rent find­ings by the lo­cal courts in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.

As part of their de­ci­sion, the judges or­dered Gup­py to pay the State al­most $100,000 in le­gal costs for de­fend­ing his ap­peal.

Gup­py is want­ed in the US for a se­ries of charges in­clud­ing con­spir­a­cy to dis­trib­ute hero­in and co­caine, at­tempt­ed dis­tri­b­u­tion, and dis­tri­b­u­tion of nar­cotics in the East­ern Dis­trict of Penn­syl­va­nia.

The ev­i­dence against him pre­sent­ed by US au­thor­i­ties to aid in his ex­tra­di­tion in­cludes in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, drug seizures, and the ev­i­dence of a US in­for­mant, who al­leged­ly iden­ti­fied Gup­py as a sup­pli­er of nar­cotics.

In Sep­tem­ber 2023, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) of­fi­cers with the as­sis­tance of the US Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA) ar­rest­ed Gup­py at an up­scale rental prop­er­ty at As­cot Road, Good­wood Park, West­moor­ings.

The of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly found 1.2 ki­los of pure co­caine and a loaded firearm at the prop­er­ty.

Gup­py was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ran­dall Raphael. The AG's Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Ravi Ra­j­coomar, SC, Raphael Ajod­hia, and Ray­don Dal­rym­ple-Watts.

On Wednes­day, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the at­tor­neys who rep­re­sent­ed the State in the case of Shurlan Gup­py ver­sus The Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (No. CA P388 of 2024).

In a state­ment the AGLA said the Court of Ap­peal ruled in favour of the State, re­ject­ing Gup­py’s ap­peal and re­fus­ing a con­di­tion­al stay of his ex­tra­di­tion. It said this rul­ing re­moves the penul­ti­mate le­gal ob­sta­cle to Gup­py’s (a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al) ex­tra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States, where he is con­front­ed with sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing charges.