Jury expected to begin deliberating Syed case

(CNS): Following more than two days of directions and summary of the evidence from the presiding judge, Justice Philip St John-Stevens, who is visiting from the UK to hear the case of Hassan Syed, he is expected to send the seven men and women to begin their deliberations Tuesday. Syed, the former president of UCCI, has denied stealing more than $500,000 from the college. He faces twelve different charges, ranging from a deception over his having a PhD and misusing the university credit card to falsifying invoices and taking an unauthorised salary advance.

The case began just over a month ago, on 2 February, but a long list of witnesses and piles of evidence were reduced to a list of admissions which boil down to a question of dishonesty. The crown says that Syed conned the college and manipulated the people around him to embezzle the cash in myriad ways, while his legal team has argued the spending was authorised in some way or that Syed had intended to pay it back, but the college was in shambles and that, combined with Syed’s own negligence over keeping track of his business and personal spending, resulted in the failure of the accountant to take the money from Syed’s salary.