REPUBLIC
OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
Mag.
App. No. 46 of 2000
BETWEEN
KELVIN
SNAGGS
SHAZIM
MOHAMMED
APPELLANTS
AND
Judgment
Delivered by M.A. de la Bastide C. J.
This
is one of the most unmeritorious appeals that I have had the misfortune to
listen to. The evidence in the case
was overwhelming. The virtual
complainant’s car was stolen on the 18th January, 1997, from where
it was parked near the Croisee in San Juan.
The vehicle was seized by the police on a date in May 1997, while it was
being driven by the co-accused of this appellant, who was also convicted of the
same offence of larceny of the motorcar of which this appellant was convicted.
At
the time when the police stopped the car, it was no longer its original grey
colour, but had been painted yellow and bore a different licence-plate.
The original licence number was PAP 4608.
When the police seized it in May, it bore the licence plate PAO 6596.
Within
a short time after the vehicle was seized by the police, in fact, the day after,
this appellant came into the police station and claimed to be the owner of the
car. He examined it himself and
claimed ownership. More than that,
he produced what purported to be a certified copy of ownership from the
Licensing Office which showed that he had bought this vehicle from a Mr. Maxwell
in November, 1996. The defence
which this appellant ran was that the car which he supposedly bought from Mr.
Maxwell was not the car which was stolen from Mr. Hurley, the virtual
complainant. Presumably, his
challenge was to the identification of the car which was seized by the police
and produced in court as the car which had been stolen.
The
evidence, which can only be described as overwhelming, was that the engine
number, to start off with, on the car which the police seized, was the same as
the engine number of Mr. Hurley’s car. On
inspection by a forensic expert, it also turned out that the original colour of
the car was grey, which was the colour of Mr. Hurley’s car, this being
recorded on the certificate of ownership of Mr. Hurley’s car.
Mr. Hurley, moreover, was able to identify the car seized as his by
reference to a hole which he himself had drilled in the panel of the car near
the gas tank. There was however one
notable difference, apart from the change of colour, between the car seized by
the police and that stolen from Mr. Hurley, - the chassis number was different.
But, as could be seen by the naked eye and was evident in a photograph
taken by a police photographer, and as was certified by the forensic expert,
that chassis number had obviously been subjected to some form of tampering and
was clearly not the original chassis number.
The
final nail in the appellant’s coffin was that that chassis number happened to
be the same as the chassis number of the car which he claimed to have bought as
recorded in the Licensing Register. This
precluded any possibility of the appellant having come innocently into
possession of the car. He was
claiming ownership of a vehicle which had been stolen, but which had been
dressed up to masquerade as the vehicle which he claimed to have bought.
On
this evidence, the only conclusion that could reasonably have been reached was
that the appellant was guilty of larceny of the vehicle.
There was a lot of other evidence which also pointed in the same
direction. For instance, in the
statement which he gave the police, the appellant claimed that the original
colour of the vehicle which he bought was blue.
This, of course, was in order to make his statement correspond with the
certificate of ownership which he had produced, in which the colour of the car
PAO 6596 was stated to be blue. By
the time he came to give his evidence, however, the results of the forensic
examination were already in evidence and showed that the original colour of the
car seized was grey. Accordingly,
he then changed his story and testified that the colour had been changed from
grey to yellow.
Counsel
for the appellant argued several grounds, all of which were lacking in merit.
The complaint was made that the appellant had not been given an
opportunity to call witnesses who would have testified that they had worked on
the car he had bought, PAO 6596, prior to the theft of Mr. Hurley’s vehicle on
the 18th January, 1997. Firstly,
the appellant had every opportunity to call these witnesses as the trial took
place over a period of about nine months.
At
the end of the evidence, after he and his co-accused had given evidence, he
asked for and was given a short adjournment in order to enable him to call his
witnesses. When the matter was
called again two days later, there were no witnesses present and his counsel
gave an explanation that the witness had a prior engagement.
The document which the appellant has sought to persuade us to admit into
evidence at this stage, and which we have rejected, provides a different excuse
for the non-appearance of the witness.
In
any event, the evidence of any witness who claimed to have worked on the car
which was the subject of this charge, would have been quite useless in the face
of the evidence to which I have already referred.
Another
point which was raised by Counsel was that in the cross-examination of the
complainant, he gave hearsay evidence to the effect that persons he had
interviewed had provided information that was contradictory of what he had been
told by the appellant. Clearly,
that evidence was indeed hearsay and ought not to have been admitted.
But it was elicited by questions which were directed to the complainant
by the appellant’s Counsel.
However
ill-advisedly, Counsel appears to have pursued the line of cross-examination
which produced these answers. But
more importantly, that evidence was not even referred to by the Magistrate in
her reasons and in the context of the uncontroverted and overwhelming evidence
to which I have referred, would have played no part in the conviction of the
appellant.
There
was also some attempt to criticise the evidence of identification of the vehicle
seized. If I understood Counsel
right, he seemed to be submitting that the evidence was defective because Mr.
Hurley, the virtual complainant, was unable to read, because of his poor
eyesight, the engine number on the car which was produced to the court.
Clearly, it doesn’t matter who reads the engine number, provided it can
be established what it was. It is
something which is literally engraved in steel.
As I have said, the evidence of identification was overwhelming.
I don’t think I need to take more time in referring to any of the other
matters that were half-heartedly raised. This
appeal is dismissed and the conviction and sentence affirmed.
MR.
GASPARD: Much obliged.
MR.
DOLSINGH: Obliged, My Lord.
(PROCEEDINGS
CONCLUDED)
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