Bahamas Attorney General John Delaney dismissed reports in the local media that his office was considering abandoning the upcoming retrial of former PLP senator Pleasant Bridgewater and ex-ambulance driver Tarino Lightbourne on charges relating to the alleged extortion attempt on US actor John Travolta.<\/p>\n
There had been rumours that the AG’s office was considering entering a nolle prosequi – a declaration that the prosecution of a case is to discontinued.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know where they would have gotten that from,” said Mr Delaney of the comments on the matter, which were supposedly from “high level sources” in the Attorney General’s Office.<\/p>\n
Mr Delaney said his office is the only one that can enter a nolle prosequi and that is not his plan.<\/p>\n
“As far as the Attorney General’s Office is concerned, the (retrial) action will proceed.”<\/p>\n
The retrial is scheduled for Monday, September 6. It was ordered by Senior Justice Anita Allen after she declared a mistrial in the first trial following an announcement by MP Picewell Forbes at the PLP\u00a0 convention that Ms Bridgewater was a “free woman”. Yet, jurors were still deliberating at the time Mr Forbes made the announcement.<\/p>\n
Judge Allen has been criticized for her actions because she declared a mistrial but did not hold Mr Forbes, or anyone accountable.<\/p>\n
One legal observer said:<\/p>\n
“Either it was a mistrial or it wasn’t.\u00a0 If indeed a mistrial was declared because of Mr Forbes remarks, then he should have gone to jail for contempt of court.<\/p>\n
If Forbes’ comments were made based on information from a leak in the jury, then an investigation should have been undertaken and a jury member should be in jail.<\/p>\n
But for the trial to be skewered, with no one being held accountable, smacks of a pre-arranged conspiracy against justice.”<\/p>\n
Some reports in US tabloids suggested that Mr Travolta no longer wishes to testify for the prosecution in the case as his wife, Kelly Preston, is now expecting another child.<\/p>\n
But the case is really rather open and shut and evidence against the two suspects is overwhelming.\u00a0 The prosecution should be successful whether Mt Travolta testifies or not.<\/p>\n
Mr Travolta testified at the first trial, which relates to the death of his 16-year-old son, Jett, at the family’s vacation home on Grand Rahama in January 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite plans by corrupt members of the Bahamas legal fraternity to railroad the Travolta trial for the second time, the Bahamas Attorney General says the case will proceed as scheduled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[46,32,31,60],"class_list":["post-1520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-celebrities","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-plp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}