Derek Achong

A Venezue­lan woman, who was among a group of lo­cals and for­eign­ers charged with breach­ing COVID-19 pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions by gath­er­ing at a guest­house in St Ann’s, in April, will face tri­al.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Mon­day, Yos­mairy Yohe­ly Du­rate Val­le­nil­la was ex­pect­ing to have the charge against her dis­missed by Mag­is­trate Sarah De Sil­va as was done with the oth­er ac­cused per­sons, ex­act­ly a week ago.

Last week, De Sil­va dis­missed the charge against Bruce Bowen, Christo­pher Wil­son, Do­minic Suraj, Collin Ramjohn, Mar­lon Hinds, and six Venezue­lan women af­ter po­lice pros­e­cu­tors re­quest­ed an­oth­er ad­journ­ment while the tri­al was ex­pect­ed to be­gin.

In mak­ing her de­ci­sion, De Sil­va not­ed that the po­lice should have act­ed with ur­gency based on their con­cerns about the case. She al­so said that she had to bal­ance the in­ter­ests of all the par­ties be­fore her.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has since ap­pealed the de­ci­sion.

Val­le­nil­la ap­peared be­fore De Sil­va on the same day but was not as lucky as her case was ad­journed be­cause it was filed sep­a­rate­ly from the group’s and was not set for tri­al pre­vi­ous­ly.

Dur­ing the hear­ing on Mon­day, De Sil­va set Val­le­nil­la’s case for tri­al on No­vem­ber 16 and gave po­lice of­fi­cers an ex­ten­sion to dis­close their ev­i­dence against her in­clud­ing video footage cap­tured by in­ves­ti­ga­tors dur­ing the raid and in­ter­view notes.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­ports, the group was ar­rest­ed at Ali­cia’s Guest House at Coblentz Av­enue in St Ann’s, af­ter a team of of­fi­cers led by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant on April 10.

At the time, breach­es un­der the reg­u­la­tions car­ried a max­i­mum penal­ty of a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison, if con­vict­ed.

The max­i­mum fine has since been in­creased to $250,000 through sub­se­quent amend­ments to the reg­u­la­tions.

While their case was still pend­ing, the lo­cal men al­so brought a sep­a­rate law­suit chal­leng­ing the over­all le­gal­i­ty of the reg­u­la­tions.

Their case was heard by for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, to­geth­er with a law­suit brought by pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj over as­pects of the reg­u­la­tions, which deal with places of wor­ship.

The group’s case was dis­missed by Boodoos­ingh in Sep­tem­ber, but Ma­haraj’s was part­ly up­held.

Boodoos­ingh ruled that the reg­u­la­tions did not pro­vide enough de­tails on how the of­fences should be ap­plied to places of wor­ship.

“That in it­self puts some­one in per­il of be­ing brought to court to an­swer an un­cer­tain of­fence,” Boodoos­ingh said.

While Boodoos­ingh not­ed that his judge­ment was most­ly a le­gal vic­to­ry for the Gov­ern­ment, he said that it should not em­pow­er it to widen the scope of the mea­sures with crim­i­nal sanc­tions for non-com­pli­ance, with­out in­volv­ing Par­lia­ment.

Val­le­nil­la is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Sean­na Ba­boolal.

Source: Guardian T&T