The Privy Council has quashed the death sentence on...

The Privy Council has quashed the death sentence on two Trinidadian men contending that their defence lawyers had failed to include good character evidence during their trial. By a margin of three to two, the Law Lords set aside the murder conviction of Kizza Sealy and Marvin Headley who were sentenced to death in 2000 for the murder of Don Christopher Prescott in January 1999. The Privy Council, the highest court in the Commonwealth Caribbean, ordered that the case be remitted to the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal to decide whether the men should face a new trial. Lord Hutton in delivering the majority judgment said: "In the present case, it is clear that had the good characters of the appellants been established, the judge would have been under a duty to give the jury a direction as to the relevance of the good character of each appellant." The Privy Council acknowledged that the case against the appellants was a strong one and that their alibi appeared to be unimpressive but it added, "the omission of a good character direction is a defect in the conduct of the trial." But in the minority judgment, Lord Hope and Sir Phillip Otton disagreed saying that while the character direction should have been included, they said this could have been an oversight.