Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Charges against con­fessed spy Pas­tor Ian Brown and two oth­ers in mat­ters re­lat­ed to the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) have been dis­charged af­ter pros­e­cu­tors in the mat­ter failed to com­ply with court pro­ce­dures.

Brown, along with for­mer se­cu­ri­ty ad­vi­sor Suzanne Por­tel-Grif­fith and po­lice­man Sher­win Wal­dron, were charged last May for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice in con­nec­tion with the al­leged trans­fer of four pro­hib­it­ed firearms be­long­ing to the TTPS to the SSA.

The mat­ter was heard by Mas­ter Kim­i­tra Gray on Tues­day.

Ar­den Williams, the at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Wal­dro, said the trio ap­peared be­fore a High Court Judge on June 27 and a sched­ul­ing or­der was made for a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing to de­ter­mine whether there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence for the mat­ter to pro­ceed to tri­al. He said sev­er­al or­ders were made un­der the Ad­journ­ment of Jus­tice In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings Act (AJI­PA) but pros­e­cu­tors were non-com­pli­ant with the or­ders.

“Ap­pli­ca­tions for ex­ten­sion of time were made, but those ap­pli­ca­tions were un­sup­port­ed by ev­i­dence. In oth­er words, no af­fi­davits were filed, ad­di­tion­al­ly, they weren’t served on the de­fence, so in oth­er words, none of the de­fence at­tor­neys was served with these ap­pli­ca­tions in all the cir­cum­stances, the court found that this non-com­pli­ance was in­deed prej­u­di­cial to the in­ter­ests of the ac­cused in the mat­ter,” Williams ex­plained.

Gray dis­charged the mat­ter un­der Sec­tion 5.9 (c) of the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules 2023 which states: “If a par­ty fails to com­ply with a di­rec­tion of the court, ap­plies for, but does not ob­tain an ex­ten­sion of time or does not ap­ply for an ex­ten­sion of time, the Court may in the case of non-com­pli­ance by the pros­e­cu­tion dis­charge the ac­cused.”

Asked if le­gal ac­tion would be tak­en against the state for wrong­ful ar­rest, Williams said he had not yet dis­cussed those op­tions with his client and had re­ceived no in­struc­tions on the mat­ter. He not­ed how­ev­er that noth­ing was pre­vent­ing Wal­dron from re­turn­ing to work as a po­lice of­fi­cer.

“Any ac­tion tak­en against him pur­suant to these charges will be in breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions be­cause he is in­no­cent un­til proven guilty, so any ac­tion tak­en against him on an al­leged charge that has been dis­charged. There is noth­ing in the law against him, so on what ba­sis would he be fur­ther prej­u­diced?”

Williams said while the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) might con­sid­er his op­tions in keep­ing the mat­ter go­ing, it would be un­fair to sub­ject Wal­dron to the same pro­ce­dure twice.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin said de­vel­op­ments in that case would not af­fect the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the SSA.

“We’re go­ing to look at all pos­si­ble ar­eas, whether we need to re­lay the mat­ter as well, but cer­tain­ly we’re go­ing to be look­ing in­to it very se­ri­ous­ly and we’re go­ing to weigh all our op­tions and very soon we’ll know in due course what our fi­nal po­si­tion is on this mat­ter, but it’s very con­cern­ing to me and I’m re­al­ly go­ing to look in­to it in a re­al­ly se­ri­ous way,” he said.

“Cer­tain­ly we are go­ing to be look­ing at all the dif­fer­ent ar­eas to en­sure we do a holis­tic in­ves­ti­ga­tion and we want to en­sure these in­ves­ti­ga­tions lead not on­ly to crime de­tec­tion but al­so crime con­vic­tion.”

Ben­jamin added: “I think it is far from over and we will con­tin­ue to do our due dili­gence in the mat­ter and the ar­eas we have to work on. We will work on these things while seek­ing to en­sure in all our cas­es go­ing for­ward that there is a greater lev­el of dili­gence places to turn crime de­tec­tion in­to crime con­vic­tions.”

Dar­ren Mitchell, the at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Pas­tor Brown, said his client had trust­ed in his faith through­out the mat­ter.

“He has al­ways trust­ed his God to take charge and show all. That has been his words to me through­out.”

Mitchell de­clined to say whether Brown was con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion against the state for “strate­gic rea­sons.”