Trinidad: Five to hang for murder of doctor

Dr Ed­ward Khoury

(Trinidad Guardian) Five men were sen­tenced to death by hang­ing yesterday af­ter a ju­ry found them guilty, af­ter lengthy de­lib­er­a­tion, of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Dr Ed­ward Khoury.

High Court Judge Mal­colm Holdip passed sen­tence on Shawn James, Caleb Don­ald­son, Jerome Mur­ray, Ter­ry Moore and Robert Franklyn at around 8:15 pm, more than six and half hours af­ter he sent the ju­ry to de­cide up­on a ver­dict.

The 12-mem­ber ju­ry took about four and a half hours to de­cide in the tri­al in to­tal as there were two breaks in the de­lib­er­a­tion process.

When the court re­con­vened just be­fore 6 pm, Holdip re­vealed that the ju­ry had re­quest­ed clar­i­ty con­cern­ing the ev­i­dence of wit­ness Myr­tle McIn­nis.

The judge read both McIn­nis’ state­ment and her cross-ex­am­i­na­tion by de­fence coun­sel Evans Welch in Jan­u­ary, be­fore ask­ing the ju­ry if they need­ed ad­di­tion­al time to de­lib­er­ate, which they ac­cept­ed.

Short­ly af­ter 8 pm, the ju­ry re­turned to the court and found each of the ac­cused guilty of the Khoury’s mur­der.

De­fence at­tor­ney Daniel Khan, who rep­re­sent­ed James in the case, urged the judge not to con­sid­er the death sen­tence as he point­ed out that his client had spent 13 years in jail await­ing the tri­al.

None of the ac­cused of­fered a state­ment to the court when called up­on af­ter be­ing sen­tenced, with a cou­ple of them sim­ply giv­ing re­as­sur­ing looks to rel­a­tives who stood the back of the court as they left.

Khoury was ab­duct­ed from his im­port and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny in the Ma­coya In­dus­tri­al Es­tate on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2005, by four men who en­tered the premis­es and de­mand­ed guns and mon­ey. Khoury ini­tial­ly re­sist­ed but was stabbed by his at­tack­ers and tak­en from the premis­es.

Two days lat­er, his de­cap­i­tat­ed body was found in an aban­doned cit­rus plan­ta­tion in cen­tral Trinidad.

Dur­ing the tri­al, which last­ed just over a year and month, the ju­ry heard sev­er­al tes­ti­monies.

Shawn James, who con­fessed to the act af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed, helped plan the kid­nap­ping and was re­spon­si­ble for dis­pos­ing of the body af­ter Khoury died. He told po­lice he could not get in­to con­tact with his ac­com­plices and went to a house in D’Abadie where they were stay­ing and saw them be­ing ar­rest­ed mere hours af­ter the kid­nap­ping. He was the on­ly one to con­fess.

James said he went to Mos­qui­to Creek in a car rent­ed by Franklin with Khoury’s body where he cut off the head and threw it in­to the sea. He then drove to Ca­paro where he aban­doned Koury’s corpse in an aban­doned cit­rus or­chard.

Traces of Khoury’s blood were found on the shoes and cloth­ing of five, as well as the trunk of the car rent­ed by ex-po­lice of­fi­cer Franklin. Fin­ger­prints were al­so found in the stolen taxi that was used in Khoury’s kid­nap­ping.