Tradesman to face retrial for 2008 Belmont murder

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A trades­man from Diego Mar­tin will have to face a re­tri­al for al­leged­ly mur­der­ing a 21-year-old man al­most 16 years ago.

Ap­pel­late judges Gillian Lucky, Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, and Mal­colm Holdip or­dered the re­tri­al for 40-year-old McLean Delpeche af­ter up­hold­ing his ap­peal over be­ing con­vict­ed of the of­fence in ear­ly 2020.

The out­come of the ap­peal was large­ly based on con­ces­sions made by Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal over the han­dling of the case by the judge as­signed to it.

De­spite mak­ing the con­ces­sions, Dougdeen-Jaglal main­tained that they did not ap­ply to the judge’s han­dling of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ev­i­dence al­leged­ly link­ing Delpeche to the crime, which she claimed was care­ful­ly, metic­u­lous­ly, and thor­ough­ly ex­plained to the 12-mem­ber ju­ry that con­vict­ed him.

She sub­mit­ted that an­oth­er judge would be well placed to sim­i­lar­ly di­rect the ju­ry on such ev­i­dence and could al­so deal with con­cerns raised by Delpeche’s lawyers, Kei­th Scot­land, SC, and Asha Watkins-Montserin, which she ad­mit­ted were not prop­er­ly ad­dressed dur­ing his first tri­al.

Jus­tice Lucky and her col­leagues agreed with the sub­mis­sions, as they ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the er­rors would not be re­peat­ed in a re­tri­al based on the out­come of the ap­peal.

They al­so not­ed that un­der the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules, the case could be fast-tracked, as they or­dered that it be im­me­di­ate­ly dock­et­ed be­fore a judge and giv­en pri­or­i­ty.

Delpeche, of Farm Road, Rich­plain, Diego Mar­tin, is ac­cused of mur­der­ing Eli­jah Baksh on May 30, 2008. Baksh, orig­i­nal­ly of Low­lands, To­ba­go, was seat­ed in a car parked along Nor­folk Street in Bel­mont when he was shot sev­er­al times.

Delpeche was ini­tial­ly con­vict­ed by a ju­ry be­fore for­mer High Court judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Car­la Brown-An­toine and was sen­tenced to the manda­to­ry death penal­ty.

The sen­tence was quashed as part of the ap­peal. Delpeche is al­so await­ing tri­al for the mur­ders of T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) Cpl An­cil Wal­lace, al­so of Rich­plain, Diego Mar­tin, and his best friend Noel Charles, of Co­corite, who were killed al­most two weeks af­ter Baksh. On June 15, 2008, Wal­lace, 46, and 42-year-old Charles were at Wal­lace’s home cel­e­brat­ing the chris­ten­ing of his son when they were at­tacked. (DA)