Leave to appeal

The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has granted convicted killer James Ricardo Alexander Fields special leave to appeal his conviction and is expected to clarify “a serious point of law” for the local courts when they eventually hear his matter.

Through his attorneys Andrew Pilgrim KC and Martie Garnes, Fields is urging the CCJ to overturn the Barbados Court of Appeal’s ruling that his conviction was safe.

Last October, the Court of Appeal lowered the sentence of the convicted manslayer but dismissed the appeal against his conviction. From that decision, Fields, formerly of Bank Hall Main Road, St Michael, was ordered to serve 11 years for the February 18, 2010 shooting death of Michael Dear.

That sentence began on July 3, 2020, five months after he was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter by a jury in the High Court.

He was initially sentenced to 22 years, minus the six years spent on remand among several factors, leaving him with 16 years to serve at Dodds. That sentence took effect from May 15, 2020.

However, Fields’ attorneys challenged his conviction and sentence on several grounds, including that the judge’s summation on the defence of alibi was inadequate; that the judge erred by imposing a sentence that was wrong in principle; and that he failed to take into account the ten-year delay in the case at the time of sentencing.

The Court of Appeal only allowed a variation of the sentence but upheld the conviction.

On Tuesday, Fields’ lawyers appeared before the CCJ, virtually, seeking special leave to appeal on four grounds.

After hearing submissions from Pilgrim and Senior State Counsel Neville Watson who appeared in association with Acting Senior State Counsel Rudolph Burnett, the CCJ panel only granted the leave to appeal on one ground – that the Justices of Appeal erred in law when they held that the trial judge correctly directed the jury on how to treat the evidence of a witness that the jury believed to be deliberately lying under oath.

Watson and Pilgrim had both agreed that “there is a serious point of law” that merits discussion and decision by the CCJ when it comes to that particular issue.

Both sides stated that Barbados has been using the specific matter of Mormon Scantlebury v The Queen, as law, to deal with such an issue. That direction relates to lies told by a prosecution witness. It essentially explains that if the jury recognises that a witness has deliberately lied, then they must be directed not to accept anything coming from that witness.

The attorneys for the appellant and respondent stated that the trial judge in Fields’ case did not give that direction to the jury.

Watson said: “This direction has been up in the air, in that some of our High Court judges give it, others do not give it, and what our Department [of Public Prosecutions] is looking for is some measure of uniformity going forward as far as that is concerned . . . . I do suspect that this ground will keep coming back . . . and perhaps it needs to be put to bed.”

Pilgrim, meanwhile, described as “disastrous” the trial judge’s failure to apply the case law.

“. . . . And we say that the Court of Appeal is not acknowledging that as a formal error in this particular decision. . . . We are agreed that there is a serious point of law that merits discussion,” the King’s Counsel said.

“This court ought to find that there is a matter of great legal importance to pronounce on . . . . I am of the view that this court ought to hear at least that point as opposed to letting it remain.”

After considering the submissions, the CCJ panel comprising Justice Winston Charles Anderson, Justice Denys Barrow and Justice Andrew Burgess agreed to allow the application for special leave to appeal.

“The application will be restricted to the ground we have been discussing this morning,” said Justice Andeson who delivered the decision.

“We will like to hear this matter urgently, not least of all because of the points raised by Mr Pilgrim – the need to clarify the situation for the judiciary in Barbados.”