The Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has dismissed an appeal filed by Baggio Kristidi Daniel against his conviction for murder in Barbados and affirmed his sentence of 28 years’ imprisonment.
Daniel was convicted in 2019 of the fatal shooting of Alex Romel Samuel on a public minibus. His conviction was based on eyewitness testimony and an oral confession, which he made to the police whilst in custody.
His appeal to the Barbados Court of Appeal was dismissed, and he subsequently appealed to the CCJ, where Daniel argued that his trial was unfair.
He contended that his constitutional right to consult an attorney had been violated, that the trial judge failed to properly rule on that issue, and that the jury was wrongly allowed to determine whether his confession should be used as evidence against him.
He also argued that the judge failed to give appropriate warnings about the reliability of certain evidence.
But in its ruling delivered by Justice Arif Bulkan, the five-member CCJ panel of judges including its President Justice Winston Anderson, ejected all these arguments.
It held that although the trial judge did not make an explicit ruling on the alleged breach of the right to counsel, her decision that it was not violated was clear from the record. By explicitly accepting the evidence of the police officers, she rejected the claim that Daniel had been denied access to an attorney.
The CCJ also found that the trial judge did not improperly delegate her role to the jury and that she had already determined that the confession was admissible. It said that her instructions to the jury were instead aimed at guiding them on how to assess the reliability of the statement.
The CCJ affirmed that juries must disregard confessions if they find that they were obtained by oppression or in breach of fundamental rights, even if they believe the statements to be true.
It also ruled that this matter did not require a special warning of the kind described in the CCJ’s case law, that certain types of evidence may not be entirely reliable and should be treated with caution. In any event, in this matter, the trial judge had properly cautioned the jury about the possible unreliability of certain evidence.
The CCJ emphasised the importance of the right to legal counsel as a fundamental safeguard in criminal proceedings but held that there was no breach of that right in this case. It also noted that the evidence against Daniel was strong and that although no witness saw the actual shooting, the combined testimony of several eyewitnesses, together with other evidence, strongly supported the jury’s verdict.
Having found no errors affecting the fairness of the trial, the CCJ dismissed the appeal and upheld the conviction and sentence.