Attorney says accused murderer may be moving closer to freedom

Dion Bruce

After the extradition was ordered and the direct appeal to the Supreme Court by means of habeas corpus was denied as well as an application for judicial review of the lower court decision, Bruce’s attorney Audrey Matura appealed the latter but not the former. Latin for ‘you shall have the body,’ a habeas corpus application asks the court to determine at its pleasure whether a person is lawfully detained by the state and may be filed as many times as necessary. The judicial review appeal still stands and Matura says a positive outcome in either brings her client closer to freedom.

Audrey Matura, Attorney for Dion Bruce

Audrey Matura

“I did the judicial review and a habeas corpus which was refused by the court; I then appealed the judicial review, not the habeas corpus, which is a very important point. Because the Crown was saying in this case that he already has an appeal against a habeas corpus, which is not true. But as my learned friend Mr. Sylvestre said, you can bring as many habeas corpus because it is a review every minute to see if the person is properly detained. That being said, it does not take away from the fact that we still have an appeal for a judicial review, which unfortunately we have been waiting [on] for some time for one technical decision to be made by the court which has to do with the bundle which we submitted as part of the record for the appeal. It does not mean also that we can’t have two appeals standing at the same time. At the end of the day, our objective is to ensure that whatever decision is made in either one of them is a decision in favor of our client, because we do not believe that he should be extradited; we do not believe the process was done properly and legally.”

The next Court of Appeal session is in March.