The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

THE Court of Appeal denied bail to dismissed police constable Toni Sweeting – who was deemed a flight risk by a Supreme Court judge – on a two-thirds majority vote.

Sweeting, 27, of Coral Harbour, who applied to that court as a last resort having been ineligible for bail in the Magistrates Court and denied bail in Supreme Court, will have to spend the remaining months behind bars at Her Majesty’s Prison as she awaits the start of her $64,000 cocaine seizure trial in October.

On Tuesday, only one of three appellate court judges thought that concerns of Sweeting fleeing the country if granted bail were not sufficiently proven.

Justice Abdulai Conteh suggested $100,000 bail, the surrender of all travel documents and reporting conditions at the Nassau Street Police Station.

Justice Conteh added although each bail application should be considered on its own merit, “given the fact however that the appellant’s co-accused, one a foreigner, had been granted bail, would inevitably give the impression that she was being punished by the denial of bail because she was a police officer at the time of the alleged commission of the offences. This, I think, would smack of pre-conviction punishment in the circumstances.”

But appeal court president Justice Anita Allen and Justice Neville Adderley were of the view that the discretion exercised by Senior Justice Jon Isaacs should not be set aside.

On April 22, the former officer and her 33-year-old brother Delano Sweeting, a pageant coach and franchise owner, faced four drug charges in connection with an April 19 cocaine raid at Lynden Pindling International Airport.

It is claimed they committed these crimes along with 33-year-old Jamaican national Conrad Campbell of Coral Heights Estates, who arraigned a week later.

The Sweetings denied the charges and pleaded not guilty.