Ombudsboy will stand trial in Supreme Court
The former Ombudsman’s assistant, Lionel Castillo, will have to stand trial in the Supreme Court on the seldom heard of charge of Agreement for Influencing an Officer. This afternoon Senior Magistrate Dorothy Flowers ruled in the preliminary inquiry that the evidence presented by the prosecution is sufficient to justify a trial. This morning in court, Castillo’s attorney, Dickie Bradley, argued that the evidence presented does not match the offence for which his client was charged. Bradley pointed specifically to the statements, photocopies of marked hundred dollar bills and tape-recorded telephone conversations of an alleged transaction that occurred at Old Belize between Castillo and parolee Kelvin Reneau on June seventeenth, 2007.
During that meeting, Castillo is alleged to have told Reneau that he influenced two members of the prison’s Parole Board to procure Reneau’s early release. That same day, police carried out a sting operation, during which they gave Reneau the marked money to pay Castillo and then collected the evidence they needed against him. In one of his submissions in court, Bradley argued that there was no signature or stamp to validate that the evidence handed over was linked to his client. However, Magistrate Flowers said that that is a matter for the Supreme Court to decide. It’s a decision that Bradley says he has to accept but plans to closely scrutinise the evidence when the case is heard in April.
Dickie Bradley, Attorney, Lionel Castillo
“When you look at what is in the disclosure that to make the accusation that he tried to influence two specific persons and those persons, their names are not even called and also this idea that somehow there are some tape recordings of conversations without…there are just pieces of paper. Because as I have pointed out to the court, nobody has signed them, they are not stamped, they don’t say if thy come from the Police Department, nobody knows where they come from. For us it’s a novelty to try an introduce tape recordings of persons because somebody has to say well this is Marion Ali’s voice. I know her voice because I have spoken to her on several occasions. It’s identification by voice. It’s just like saying you can pick out somebody because you have seen them several times.”
Marion Ali
“You said this morning in court that the best the prosecution could have made out of the matter was just to come up with oh well that Mr. Castillo just conned somebody out of money.”
Dickie Bradley
“I would that if somebody is alleging that a person comes and says boy I can do something fi yoh. Gimme wah money, according to their side, we don’t accept that, and that person is naive enough to hand over money listen to it, after the person has been paroled, a person in prison is granted parole and after he’s on parole he’s saying that I’m taking monies to somebody who allegedly helped me or said they could help me or said would help me, that sounds from the onset that sounds strange because you know a prisoner who comes out he’s going to … so clearly it was what we call a sting operation. It was an entrapment operation and there will be a chance to test it in a court of law.”
Kelvin Reneau, who was in court today with a parole officer, has said that he does not want to proceed with the case against Castillo. During the inquiry, Prosecutor, Sergeant Frank Augustine, told the court that he is prepared to hand over the marked hundred dollar bills as early as tomorrow. Meanwhile, Castillo was granted and met bail of three thousand dollars. He was initially charged on August thirteenth of 2007 with extortion in connection with the same incident. That charge was withdrawn on February fourth of this year on the recommendation of the D.P.P.
