Four Guyanese who were sentenced in 2009 to long jail terms in Barbados over drug trafficking have been allowed by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to appeal a ruling of the Barbados Court of Appeal denying their application to appeal their convictions because time had run out.
The court ruled in the favour of applicants Rohan Shastri Rambarran, Lemme Campbell, Somwattie Persaud and Wayne Gavin Green against the Barbados Court of Appeal.
It will seek to settle whether the time for appealing against a conviction begins to run from the date of conviction or from the date of sentence; and whether the Barbados Court of Appeal properly refused to expand the time for appealing the convictions by applicants who had filed notices of appeal against convictions and which had been dismissed by the court as being out of time.
Campbell, 45, his wife Persaud, 40, both of 106 New Garden Street, Queenstown, Georgetown; Christopher Bacchus, 43, and his wife Dianne Bacchus, 37, both of Bay Gardens, Bayland, St Michael; Green, 38, of North Ruimveldt, Georgetown and Bridgefield, St Thomas; and Rambarran, a 43-year-old businessman of Georgetown, Guyana, were convicted on six counts relating to a police seizure of hundreds of kilos of both cannabis and cocaine at a house in Bay Gardens, St Michael on June 4, 2009.
When the applications by the four came up on July 16, 2015 at the CCJ, the Barbados Director of Public Prosecutions argued that the time for appealing had expired on June 25, 2009, 21 days after conviction. The quartet, however, contended that they had filed their appeals within 21 days of the sentencing.
On February 4, 2015, Rambarran also approached the Barbados Court of Appeal seeking an extension of
