It all felt like a nightmare – except the story Donnell Inniss describes is common for many young men in this country who are charged for murder, tossed into prison and forgotten for over a decade as remanded inmates.
Inniss, 23, from East Port of Spain, was charged for the murder of Ronald Ettienne who was shot to death on September 23, 2009.
Inniss waited nearly 14 years for his day in court.
On April 21, Judge Carla Brown-Antoine found Inniss not guilty of murder in a judge alone trial. It took 11 more days for the DPP’s office to drop some of the gun possession charges against him related to that murder and to untangle the situation with his bail for other gun-related charges.
On May 2, Inniss finally walked out of prison as a free man. He is now 37.
“Before my arrest, life was kind of up and down,” said Inniss.
“I did plumbing in St Augustine, but the work and money wasn’t regular enough. I started to lime with certain friends and sell marijuana for a living.”
Then, Inniss said, he got caught up into things he shouldn’t be doing.
“I was given firearms to keep to protect the community from outsiders. That’s just how it is now. Everyone wants to protect their base. Eventually I started to have guns too. Then my name started to call with the police for different crimes in the area. They’d take me to the station, and give me 72 hours in a cell, but I didn’t do anything wrong so I got out every time.”
[caption id="attachment_1015957" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Donnell Inniss at Woodford Square, Port of Spain on May 12, enjoying the "free world." - ROGER JACOB[/caption]
But his name kept coming up in police investigations.
“I ended up with a gun and ammunition charge and a shooting case just from someone calling my name. A fellow pointed me out. It’s that easy. When people start to call your name, you can get a charge.”
Inniss got charged with ten counts of shooting, five for shooting at a police officer, and five for shooting at another person.
“In court, I won the five charges for shooting at the man. I still had five counts of shooting with intent against the police officer – even though that person who called my name and got me arrested on both charges never came to court and dropped the charges.”
Inniss spent three months in Port of Spain Prison for those charges and came out in early 2009 on bail.
“I went back to lime with the same group,” he said.
Then, Ettienne got shot and killed in Charford Court, Port of Spain and Inniss’s name got called for that crime.
“The officers came and met us gambling, gave me a gambling charge and carried me down for the murder one time. No one had given a statement, but the street was talking and it said, ‘We think it’s Donnell.’ I knew Ettienne, but we weren’t friends.”
When the police asked where he was at the time of the murder, Inniss said he couldn’t remember.
“It happened about a month before. I couldn’t recall for sure where I was. The police put me on an ID parade and then said I was identified. I couldn’t believe I get this c
