UKPC 12

UKPC 12

UKPC 12

In the early afternoon of Wednesday, 27 November 2002, in the course of a robbery at the Starlight Recreation Club in Palmyra Village, San Fernando, the club's proprietor, Kenneth Boxier, was shot dead. On 8 February 2006, following a three-week trial before Mohammed J and a jury at the San Fernando Assizes, the appellant, Ronald John, was convicted of Bogie's capital murder and, as required by the law of Trinidad and Tobago, sentenced to death. On 28 March 2007, his appeal against conviction was dismissed by the Court of Appeal (Hamel-Smith, Warner and Kangaroo JJA). This further appeal is brought pursuant to special leave granted by the Board on 6 December 2007. (Sanders 2007)

The only evidence against the appellant was that given by an accomplice, Jeffrey Lewis, a taxi driver, whose basic account to the jury was that on the occasion of the killing he had driven the appellant and two other (unidentified) men to various locations in the south including the Starlight Club, having understood that the men were just going “to mark a scene” (carry out a reconnaissance), that at the Club the appellant got out of the car with a gun in his hand, that he himself remained in the car under threat during the course of the robbery, that he had then driven the men back to Sea Lots where he had first picked them up, and that he had been in a position to describe the appellant to the police (sufficiently to enable the police to arrest the appellant on 6 December 2002) because for some months previously, once or twice a week whilst on his taxi run, he had used to see the appellant liming (hanging around) on Queen and Nelson Streets, Port of Spain, on one occasion for two or three hours, and so was able to recognise him although he did not know him personally. He had also, of course, seen the appellant on the drive south to the Club on 27 November when, he told the jury, the appellant had hired him and had been the front seat passenger affording him ample opportunity for observation; he said he would have looked at the appellant's face for some 20-25 minutes in all that day.

Indisputably Lewis had driven the robbers to the Club: although efforts had been made to obscure the hire car's registration plates, its number had in fact been noted and had led the police on 3 December 2002 to the vehicle's owner who told them that Lewis had been driving it on 27 November. Lewis himself was arrested on 3 December and twice interviewed by the police that day before taking them on the route he had taken with the robbers on 27 November. On 4 December Lewis made the first of two written statements to the police under caution. On 6 December Lewis was again seen by the police and again accompanied them on the route taken on 27 ...