Manslaughter conviction thrown out by Appeals Court

A man originally accused of murder, but convicted only of manslaughter, had his conviction completely overturned yesterday by the Court of Appeal. Benjamin Chulin of Orange Walk was cleared, his nine-year prison sentence wiped out, and he cannot be retried for the death of Reynaldo Roberts in 2003. His attorney, Hubert Elrington, successfully argued that certain documents used in his indictment should not have been admitted since they listed the date of Roberts’s death as December ninth 2002, when the victim in fact died on June twenty-second 2003, over six months later. The charges against Chulin arose from an incident in Orange Walk on December ninth 2002, in which Roberts and a brother were at the Chulin home drinking. Roberts is alleged to have called Chulin’s wife “darling” and touched her on the shoulder. Chulin then asked the brothers to leave, and it is alleged that while they were walking away he shot Reynaldo Roberts in the left side with a spear gun. The defence argued that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that the injury is what led to Roberts?s death.