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AKEEL Mitchell – one of the men charged with the brutal murder of six-year-old Sean Luke in 2006 – will begin his defence on Wednesday.
The High Court judge presiding over his virtual, judge-only trial has ruled he has a case to answer. In an oral decision delivered on Monday, Justice Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds provided her reasons for overuling Mitchell’s no-case submission.
His co-accused, Richard Chatoo, did not make a no-case submission and will begin his defence on Friday.
They are both indicted for Luke’s murder sometime between March 25 and 29, 2006, and have both pleaded not guilty.
After the ruling, Mitchell was asked if he wanted to give evidence or call witnesses. He opted to stay silent, but will call Prof Hubert Daisley as his witness.
Daisley did a second, independent, autopsy on Luke’s body. One of Daisley’s findings was strangulation as a cause of death, as opposed to the official conclusion of the State’s forensic pathologist, Dr Eslyn McDonald-Burris, who said the boy died from “internal chest and abdominal injuries and haemorrhage due to a foreign object – a cane stalk – introduced into the body cavity.” Mitchell’s defence is an alibi. He says he was not present when Luke was killed.
On Friday, Chatoo will give evidence in his defence. He will no longer seek to incorporate into the trial the evidence his stepfather gave when both men challenged the admissibility of the prosecution’s evidence.
Last Monday, Mitchell’s attorney, Mario Merritt, in the no-case submission, said there was nothing in the evidence of the prosecution to point to his being involved in Luke’s killing.
Merritt said the case was based purely on circumstantial evidence which was manifestly unreliable and did not point to Mitchell’s role in the crime.
"What did he do? Did he hold him down? Push the piece of cane? Block his mouth? You must first establish the ‘joint enterprise’ engaged in to bring about the death of the deceased,” Merritt said. “There is nothing in the evidence against him to show there was a plan to kill.”
Merritt also said his client, who was weeks shy of turning 14 when he was arrested and charged, should not be made to answer to the charge of murder because of the legal principles which deem children incapable of forming the intent to commit a crime.
“What is the evidence the court can use? No questions were asked of him about the actual incident or him knowing that the acts committed were criminally or morally wrong."
The submissions were all dismissed by the judge.
Once all the evidence is completed, the judge will give her verdict. She has 14 days in which to do so.
Mitchell and Chatoo are also represented by attorneys Evans Welch, Kirby Joseph, Randall Raphael, Kelston Pope, and Gabriel Hernandez.
Assistant DPP Sabrina Dougdeen-Jaglal, state attorneys Anju Bhola, and Sophia Sandy-Smith are prosecuting the two.
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