10 years after being discharged of $13m cocaine, gun, ammo charges
By Akile Simon
NEARLY ten years after being discharged by former High Court judge and now Justice Minister, Herbert Volney, on charges relating to $13 million worth of cocaine and a gun and ammunition, Rick Anthony Gomes was yesterday found guilty of the same charges.
Gomes, 47, is expected to be sentenced on Wednesday before Justice Gillian Lucky at the Port of Spain Assizes. Lucky said she needed time to look at the various types of sentencing before determining an appropriate sentence for Gomes.
While he was being escorted by police out of the courtroom, Gomes hurled obscenities at the jury and two police officers who were the complainants in the matter.
"You're a piece of f…..g s..t," Gomes told the jurors before he was snatched by two police officers and pulled out of the prisoner's docks. He repeated the insult as he pointed to the complainants in the case while being led towards the prisoner's holding bay at the basement of the court.
Gomes was found guilty by a nine-member jury on all four charges after the jury deliberated for three hours and emerged with a unanimous verdict yesterday around 4.p.m., during a special Saturday sitting of the court.
When asked by the court if he had anything to say Gomes replied, "There were never any drugs in my house. That is all I have to say, there were not any drugs at my house."
Special prosecutor Dana Seetahal SC told the court that Gomes had a previous conviction in the US where he was sentenced by a Florida judge to serve 70 months in prison on charges of possession of cocaine for the purpose of distribution on June 3, 1991.
He was convicted yesterday on charges of possession of 18 packets of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking; possession of a .32 revolver and possession of four rounds of .32 ammunition.
There were two separate cocaine charges since one of the packets was found inside the trunk of a vehicle that Gomes rented. The other 17 packets were found at his Spanish Villas, Mt Hololo, St Ann's, home on May 15, 1998, by Organised Crime Narcotics and Firearms Bureau officers.
The prosecution relied heavily on the testimonies of Ag Insp Junior Roberts, Cpl Wayne Gilkes and Sgt Herman Fournellier of the OCNFB.
Gomes had been resisting extradition to Trinidad since his arrest in May 2006, saying the conditions of the prisons in Trinidad were appalling, but was ordered extradited to this country earlier this year by a London judge.
At the start of his trial on November 4, 1999, in which he was jointly charged with Luis Blanco Gomez on May 15, 1998 with possession of cocaine for trafficking, then Justice Volney severed the firearm and ammunition charges. Gomes was charged additionally, with a further similar count with possession of a firearm and ammunition. At the close of the prosecution case on December 14, 1999, Volney upheld a defence submission of no case to answer and discharged the defendant.
On February 11, 2000 the Court of Appeal judges, then Chief Justice Michael de la Bastide, Satnarine Sharma and Mustapha Ibrahim, in Gomes' absence, allowed the State's appeal and ordered a retrial of the two defendants, but Gomes left the country on December 16, 1999, after he was granted bail on the firearm and ammunition charges, knowing that the State intended to appeal Volney's decision to discharge him.
