As you heard in our story, several of the defendants are already
considering an appeal of their conviction and sentencing. Well, Dexter
Todd, Mason's attorney, told us this evening, that he is already taking
initial steps to file that appeal of the case.
This evening, Todd granted us a teleconference interview from his home
country of Guyana, and he told us that this case has to go through its
full appeal process.
That's because apart from the defendants' dissatisfaction at the
outcome, this trial will most likely be referenced in the rest of the
region and the world. According to Todd, it will most likely become an
example of how tribunals ought to treat circumstantial evidence used to
secure convictions in particularly violent murders.
Here are those comments from a few hours ago:
Dexter Todd - Attorney for William Mason
"If I were to be very honest, I would have said to my client a few days ago
in preparation for this sentencing hearing that the likelihood of the
sentences being very hefty is great taken into consideration that it is a
matter that has caught the attention of the entire country. As to how it
got so popular, I'm not really sure but I can tell you it carried very high
momentum in the entire country and for one to be anticipating very light
sentencing would have been some far reaching. While the perception in this
case is that there was both forensic and other evidence which supported or
corroborated the issue of circumstantial evidence, I'm still of the mind
the bulk of the evidence produced in this case was that of circumstantial
basis, it was circumstantial evidence. We have found throughout the
Caribbean and I do a lot of studies throughout the Caribbean as a PhD
student in looking at how the court have moved in a number of areas and
what I have found is that maybe 75% of the cases where the bulk of the
evidence produced were of a circumstantial basis and an appellant court
sometimes do not follow the arguments and the reasoning of trail judge. I
say that to say that in dealing with circumstantial evidence, there is
always an element of subjectivity and objectivity. The case before us a
very high sensitive case yes but I believe the cases ended still to this
point with a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of unanswered questions
that could have gone either way and in that regard, I support the decision
of my client to appeal this matter and I believe if this matter at an
appellant level will only make the jurisprudence not only of Belize but
also make the legal jurisprudence, the criminal law jurisprudence of the
entire colonial Caribbean very rich because of we look around the colonial
Caribbean, we have not had really beheading cases that were substantially
based on circumstantial evidence to contemplate and so a lot of cases were
they to come up around the Caribbean, we'll be looking to the Mason's case
for very sound legal reasoning and it's for that type of reasoning I
believe that this case ought to go it's full length because there are a
host of things that are left hanging that I believe that we need
pronouncements on. Even to this point in time, at the sentencing stage,
Mason maintained his innocence in the matter, he is still very adamant that
he did not commit this crime. I noticed that they were commenced as I was
following the news, the DPP also made mention to it that you still have 5
convicted persons who are before the court but they have not admitted that
they committed the crime and still to this day they really did not admit,
they do not admit to committing this crime. At this point in time it's
seems as though the public through the court has been given an opportunity
as through justice has been served but to the accused persons, justice has
not been served, they are feeling at this point in time as though the
system failed and it is in that context I will say that this matter going
to the appellant level is not an attack on the trail judge, I would say
personally, it's my first time appearing before the trial judge and I find
that the trail judge is an excellent jurist for the Caribbean."
Todd appeared throughout the sentencing hearing via teleconference.
The defendants have 21 days to file an appeal to the Court of Appeal.
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