Trinidad: Pregnant mom and husband denied bail on gang charge

Rhonda McMeo arrives at the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court yesterday, where she appeared on gang affiliation charges. TRINIDAD GUARDIAN/Anisto Alves

(Trinidad Guardian) A sev­en-month preg­nant woman, her com­mon-law hus­band and one of their neigh­bours from Diego Mar­tin have been de­nied bail af­ter be­ing charged with be­ing mem­bers of a gang. They were charged un­der the An­ti-Gang Act.

Rhon­da McMeo, her com­mon-law hus­band Mark Ahy­ee and their neigh­bour Kurt Cud­joe, all of La Puer­ta, Diego Mar­tin, were re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody af­ter ap­pear­ing be­fore Mag­is­trate Maris­sa Gomez in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

 
They plead­ed not guilty to the of­fence, which car­ries a 10-year sen­tence up­on con­vic­tion and is al­leged to have oc­curred on di­verse days be­tween May 27 last year and last Sun­day.

Po­lice pros­e­cu­tor In­sp Cal­lis­ter Charles ob­ject­ed to bail for them, as he not­ed that they were al­leged to have com­mit­ted the of­fence whilst out on bail for sep­a­rate drug pos­ses­sion charges.

De­fence at­tor­neys Alex­ia Romero and Sherise Chat­too chal­lenged Charles’ claim, as they al­leged that the crim­i­nal records pre­sent­ed for each were not up­dat­ed to re­flect that some of the pend­ing cas­es had been de­ter­mined in their favour. Both at­tor­neys al­so claimed their clients had young chil­dren who are un­der their care.

“She (McMeo) has two chil­dren at her home wait­ing on her. They have not seen her since Sun­day,” Romero said.

Gomez even­tu­al­ly up­held Charles’ ob­jec­tion, as she point­ed out that Romero and Chat­tam were un­able to pro­vide ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate their claims.

Gomez ad­journed the case to Sep­tem­ber 11, when an­oth­er mag­is­trate is ex­pect­ed to con­sid­er bail af­ter their at­tor­neys pro­vide court ex­tracts for the cas­es list­ed on their crim­i­nal records.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Cud­joe was sep­a­rate­ly charged with pos­ses­sion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly four and a half grammes of mar­i­jua­na, which was found in his house when he and his co-ac­cused were ar­rest­ed last Sun­day. Cud­joe plead­ed guilty to the charge.

In pre­sent­ing a mit­i­ga­tion plea be­fore sen­tenc­ing, Chat­too asked for le­nien­cy, as she said it was a small amount of mar­i­jua­na and that the con­struc­tion work­er had vol­un­teered to par­tic­i­pate in a sub­stance abuse pro­gramme to stop us­ing it.

“He has said that he is will­ing to get help as he is not set­ting a good ex­am­ple for his two chil­dren,” Chat­too said.

Af­ter hear­ing the sub­mis­sions, Gomez fined Cud­joe $2,000. In the event that he does not pay the fine, Cud­joe will have to serve three months in prison with hard labour.

The trio’s court ap­pear­ance was slight­ly de­layed as Gomez sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion over whether the gang charge had been im­prop­er­ly laid by po­lice.

At the start of the hear­ing, Gomez raised con­cerns over whether the charge had been laid in­dictably (heard and de­ter­mined by a High Court Judge and ju­ry) or sum­mar­i­ly (heard and de­ter­mined by a mag­is­trate).

Af­ter a short break, As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) George Bus­by came to the hear­ing and in­formed Gomez that the po­lice had prop­er­ly laid the charge sum­mar­i­ly, as re­quired un­der the An­ti-Gang Act.