Kitty businessman cleared of drug-trafficking charge

Businessman Gavin Blackman of Kitty, Georgetown, who five years ago had been charged with trafficking 2.4 pounds of cocaine, has been set free by Principal Magistrate Faith Mc Gusty on Friday last.

After conducting a lengthy trial, the Principal Magistrate found the 42-year-old Blackman not guilty of the drug-trafficking charge brought against him by the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU); whose case was that the businessman had been under CANU investigation for some time, and that he had been trailed to his friend’s house on the day in question.
CANU had contended that at around 09:30h on May 4, 2018, Gavin Blackman had been seen visiting his friend’s home at Lot 2 Norton Street, Wortmanville, Georgetown with a black plastic bag in his possession. He was called upon by a rank, but he ran, and was seen throwing the black plastic bag into his friend’s house. When the bag was retrieved and searched, cocaine was found inside, and Blackman was therefore arrested and charged.
CANU had further contended that when Blackman was arrested, $880,000 that he had in his possession were seized, as was his car.
However, Blackman’s lawyer Siand Dhurjon argued that a CANU officer had found in a neighbour’s yard a black plastic bag similar to the one Blackman had thrown into his friend’s house. In that bag, the ranks discovered a bricklike object which tested positive for cocaine during a field test conducted by an officer.
Dhurjon contended that CANU agents had found nothing illegal during their thorough search of his client, and had similarly found nothing incriminating inside the house where the bag had been thrown. As such, he argued,
there had been nothing nefarious about the parcel seen in Blackman’s possession, as it was “a most generic and unremarkable black plastic bag.”
Further, Dhurjon said his client was never even duty bound to stop when the CANU officers, who had not been dressed in uniform, had merely screamed the words “CANU, don’t move!” as CANU is “an entity unknown to statute”.
“When reflecting on the evidence during Friday’s hearing, the Magistrate remarked that she ‘did not want to speculate’, and could not make the conclusion that the bag found in the yard originated from Mr Gavin Blackman, since there was a lack of evidence,” Dhurjon said.
During the trial, he said, he had submitted that the very house that CANU officers raided and intercepted Blackman had been raided several times in the past, as recently as August 2022.
Blackman, who had been out on $600,000 bail pending his trial, remarked in an invited comment that he is pleased that justice has been served, and that he is taking all steps possible to steer clear of the wrong side of the law.