The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions will petition the Court of Appeal to retry Donna Vasyli for the murder of her husband.

Director of Public Prosecutions Garvin Gaskin told The Tribune his office will pursue a new hearing to consider her guilt or innocence.

Vasyli’s hopes for walking free were raised when the Court of Appeal quashed her conviction in 2017, though two appellate judges had ordered a retrial in the case.

She appealed the matter before the country’s highest court, however in March, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London ruled that she has a case to answer for the 2015 killing of her husband, Australian podiatrist Phillip Vasyli.

However, the decision on whether a retrial will be ordered was passed back to Bahamas’ Court of Appeal to decide. The DPP has now moved to ask that this happens.

The Vasylis were married for 34 years. They lived in the exclusive gated community of Old Fort Bay.

Vasyli’s lawyer gave four reasons to the Privy Council for why there was no case for a jury to convict on, all of which the committee rejected.

The prosecution and defence agreed that Mr Vasyli had an alcohol abuse problem. They agreed that on March 23, 2015, Mr Vasyli fell down the stairs while drunk, cutting his back on glass from picture frames as he fell. Later that afternoon the couple entertained three people: Myles Pritchard, Jody Pritchard and Mitchell Matthew. The Vasylis were left alone for about 45 minutes when the guests left. However, Vasyli left her home and went to her daughter’s house.

Early the next morning a gardener found Mr Vasyli on the floor of the kitchen at the Vasylis’ residence, dead with a stab wound to his neck. The kitchen gave way to a covered patio behind some patio doors. The gardener arrived by way of the patio where he found blood and a bloody kitchen knife. He opened the locked patio doors with his emergency key to get to the kitchen where he found Mr Vasyli.

Sir Nicholas Hamblen wrote in the Privy Council judgment that “none of the doors to the house showed any sign of having been damaged or tampered with. Although there were many valuables in the house, nothing had been stolen. Mr Vasyli’s body bore no defensive injuries.”

The first officer on the scene found Vasyli in bed, shaking and crying. She allegedly told him she and her husband fought the night before.

Small amounts of Mr Vasyli’s blood were found on the groin area of the blue dress his wife was wearing when police encountered her and blood traces were also found on the front, right sleeve cap of a multi-coloured dress found in the room where she spent the night.

The prosecution argued Vasyli murdered her husband when their guests left and before she went to her daughter’s home. Their case, based on circumstantial evidence, emphasized how the pair were left alone the evening of the incident, that the knife which appeared to inflict the wound was one of a set of knives kept in the kitchen, that the Vasylis had an abusive relationship, that there was no evidence of an intruder or disturbance within the house and that

Vasyli was serving a 20 year sentence before her conviction was overturned.

In the Court of Appeal’s 71-page judgment, then-President Justice Dame Anita Allen said she was of the view the jury was possibly left with the impression, as suggested by counsel for the prosecution in its closing address, that the appellant lied about her clothing and the functionality of security cameras to conceal the murder of her husband.

This, she said, resulted in a clear danger that the jury might regard the lies of the appellant as probative of her guilt and warranted the judge to give a direction on the significance of lies.

Justice Jon Isaacs expressed concern that manslaughter by provocation was not left to the jury as an option while Justice Stella Crane-Scott dissented on the necessity of a retrial entirely given the inconclusive state of the circumstantial evidence.

However, her colleagues believed a retrial was in the interest of justice.

One week later, Vasyli was granted $250,000 bail.