R v Weekes

• Jurisdiction: Caribbean States
• Judge: Archer, J.
• Judgment Date: 17 March 1960
• Court: Federal Supreme Court (West Indies)
• Date: 17 March 1960

Federal Supreme Court

Rennie, J.;

Archer, J.;

Wylie. J.

R.

and

Weekes

J. O. F. Haynes for the appellant.

G. L. B. Persaud, Solicitor-General (Ag.), for the Crown.

Criminal law - Confession — Conflicting police versions of confession-Note of confession in occurrence book admitted in evidence to resolve conflict-Admissibility.

1 Archer, J., delivered the judgment of the court: The appellant was convicted of the murder of Ismay Algoo. The deceased came to her death from injuries received at her home about 2.30 p.m. on August 20, 1959. The post mortem examination disclosed that death was due to laceration of her brain with haemorrhage following injury to her head and multiple other injuries. The case for the Crown was that the appellant had inflicted several incised wounds upon the deceased's neck, face, arms and body with a razor while they were in her bedroom and had followed her into the kitchen and there dealt her a blow upon her head with an axe.

2 At the trial two eyewitnesses to the attack with the axe were put forward. They were the deceased's two sisters who lived nearby, but there were no eyewitnesses to the alleged attack with the razor.

3 The appellant went to the police station after the incident at the deceased's house. The police constable in charge of the inquiries office at the time gave evidence that the appellant had told him that he and his reputed wife, Betty Algoo, had had domestic worries, that he had cut her with a razor, that he believed she was dead, and that he was trying to cut his neck with the razor. Another police constable who was at the station when the appellant went there, said that he was in the inquiries office when he heard the appellant speak to the inquiries officer saying that he had just killed Betty Algoo, that he had a wound on the left side of his neck, that the inquiries officer asked him what was wrong with his neck, and that he said that he was trying to kill himself because Betty Algoo had ruined his life.

4 The appellant, in an unsworn statement from the dock, said that the deceased had attacked him with a razor that a struggle had ensued in the bedroom, that she attempted to run into the kitchen, and that he tried to hold her back but that she fell and hit her head on the axe. This statement was at variance with his alleged admissions to the police at the inquiries office and the discrepancies between the evidence of the two police constables...