Retrial in WB child killing delayed
Jeremiah Barnes
(CNS): The courts have agreed to a more than ten month delay in the retrial of Devon Anglin (29) for the murder of four-year-old Jeremiah Barnes at a West Bay gas station in February 2010. The case has already been plagued with delays after Anglin was acquitted during the first trial and the crown appealed the ruling of the judge, who heard the case without a jury.
On Wednesday, Justice Charles Quin agreed to move the scheduled July retrial to May of next year to allow Anglin to retain the leading counsel of his choice in the murder case.
The Court of Appeal ordered the retrial when it allowed the crown’s appeal last December, some 18 months after the appeal was argued before the panel of judges. Those arguments had also been postponed a number of times as a result of various problems, most of them relating to defence counsel.
Fiona Robertson from Samson and McGrath, who is instructing John Ryder, the British Queen’s Counsel in the case, explained that the QC’s professional commitments prevented him from making the July trial. She said Anglin had been represented by Ryder from the start, including an acquittal, and, given the stakes, he was keen to have continuity at the second trial.
Robertson argued that there was no real prejudice to the crown for the adjournment but if Anglin was forced to find new counsel at this stage, when he is facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in jail, the prejudice to him would be considerable.
Crown counsel Alexander Upton objected and said that there had been numerous adjournments leading up to the appeal because of Ryder’s diary, and given the fact that the case was now more than five years old, the “continuous slippage” was in danger of preventing the retrial from ever getting started.
However, given that murder is the most serious of charges and that the Bill of Rights provides for a defendant to have access to counsel of their choice, Justice Quin agreed to the adjournment but urged the lawyers to ensure there were no more applications to move the trial unless it could be brought forward.
He said it was not an easy decision because of the history of delays in the case.
“The court has a duty to ensure the defendant has a fair trial,” the judge said. It was regrettable that the July date was to be vacated, he said, but accepted the need for continuity. Identifying the competing interests in the case, he said the court had great sympathy for the Barnes family, but noted that while the memories of witnesses may fade, this case had the benefit of video evidence.
“It is a balancing exercise that dips in favour of the defendant having the counsel of his choice,” Justice Quin stated, as he allowed the defence application.
Jeremiah Barnes, who was just four years old, was shot in the head and killed while sitting in the back of his parents’ car at the Hell Gas Station in West Bay more that five years ago in February 2010, when a masked gunman opened fire on the Barnes family car. The crown claims that Andy Barnes, Jeremiah’s father and a gang rival of Anglin, was the intended target.
