The hearing of the fraud cases stemming from the March 2020 general elections was further postponed yesterday to January 15 to ensure that the files are properly organised.
The charges were filed since June 2021 and have had hearings before several magistrates before being consolidated before Magistrate Leron Daly in the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court.
At the previous hearing, Magistrate Daly had requested that the 24 case files brought before her be sorted by the prosecution before she proceeded with the matter. However, during yesterday’s proceedings the prosecution presented the 24 case files still not properly sorted, which made it difficult for the court to organize the documents and undertake its own record-keeping.
Attorney-at-law Eusi Anderson queried the disclosure process noting that the defence team should have access to the case files. The magistrate agreed on the grounds that this would allow the attorneys the opportunity to know what they will be objecting to as the court’s mandate is to conduct a fair trial.
State prosecutor Darshan Ramdhani, on the other hand, argued that the matter has already gone past the disclosure stage and that all the boxes containing charges have been separated per charge. However, he agreed that an adjournment will allow the prosecution to conduct one last overview so that all the case files could be put in order.
As such the magistrate adjourned the matter to January 15, 2024. She said that due to the sheer volume of the bundles it would be impractical for the court to organise it by itself and requested that the prosecution has it categorised and indexed.
On January 15, the defendants in the matter will need to be present at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court to sign and uplift their statements.
This date is also set for the case management conference.
The defendants are former Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield, former District Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, Former Deputy Chief Election Officer Roxanne Myers, Volda Lawrence, Sheffern February, Denise Bobb-Cummings, Michelle Miller, Carol Smith-Joseph, and Enrique Livan.
The charges which were initially read to the defendants in June of 2021 state that between March 2nd of 2020 and August 2nd also of 2020, they conspired with each other to defraud the electors of Guyana by declaring a false account of votes cast for the general election which was held on March 2nd, 2020.
