Senior Magistrate Leron Daly on Friday dismissed the racial hostility and cybercrime charges brought against former Mayor of Georgetown Ubraj Narine and Opposition Member of Parliament Sherrod Duncan.
The magistrate ruled that the prosecution failed to establish even a prima facie case against the two men. The duo was represented by Attorney-at-Law, Darren Wade.
The charges were filed against Narine and Duncan back in 2022 during a protest outside of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
In filing the charges, the police claimed that the two intentionally transmitted a video in an attempt to incite racial division. They were not required to plea to the indictable charges, but were granted bail in the sum of $100,000 at the time.
In a detailed ruling on Friday, the magistrate outlined several critical evidential and procedural deficiencies in the case presented by the State under both the Racial Hostility Act and Section 18 of the Cybercrime Act.
The charges stemmed from comments made in a video circulated online, in which Narine allegedly accused the government of discriminating against Afro-Guyanese citizens while favouring Indo-Guyanese. Duncan, for his part, was accused of disseminating the video via social media.
Addressing the charge under the Racial Hostility Act, the magistrate said the State failed to satisfy the four key elements necessary to sustain the charge.
“The first thing the State was required to prove”, she explained, “was that the defendant, by his words or actions, excited or attempted to excite hostility against a section of the population or a particular person.”
She noted that “hostility” was not defined in the legislation and therefore had to be interpreted using its ordinary dictionary meaning, including “ill will, prejudice, resentment, unfriendliness, or dislike.”
Turning to the charge under the Cybercrime Act, the magistrate expressed concern over the lack of foundational evidence regarding the device allegedly used to share the video.
“Did you present any evidence in relation to the device that was used?” she asked the prosecutor, who replied in the negative.
The magistrate emphasised that no phone or computer was seized or examined to determine whether it met the legal definition of a “computer system” under the Act. “While I can take judicial notice of what a cell phone is, the device should have been taken and examined,” she stressed. “That evidence is not on the record.”
In both matters, the court concluded that the State had failed to prove its case at even the most basic legal level. “When one or more elements of an offence are missing, the court has a responsibility to dismiss the case,” the magistrate ruled.
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