PHILIPSBURG--The Prosecutor demanded four years on Thursday, against a 35-year-old man suspected of attempted manslaughter and infliction of severe mistreatment in an attack with a machete.
Suspect N.A.C.A. was charged with cutting a Spanish-speaking man, who had come to his door and accused him of having assaulted his girlfriend.
The victim was cut to his neck and wrist in the incident which occurred in the vicinity of Peking Supermarket on Welfare Road, on July 29, 2013.
The victim was bleeding heavily and sustained a deep cut to the left side of his neck and also a cut to his wrist while attempting to ward off a blow. He spent a week at the hospital's Intensive Care Unit and is still not fully recovered.
The victim is scarred for life and cannot properly use several of his fingers, which made him lose his job, it was stated during the trial.
The defendant, nicknamed "Bolita," denied the allegations and provided differing statements to the police and the Judge of Instruction, claiming he was attacked by the victim first.
Before the Judge on Thursday, he denied every involvement and said the allegations were fabrications of a police officer, who had also expelled his girlfriend to the Dominican Republic.
The mechanic denied he even knew the victim, who is of Jamaican descent. The man had recognised Bolita as his assailant from a photograph.
Based on the witness' statements and the injuries, Prosecutor Karola van Nie found attempted manslaughter proven. She said the number of incidents in St. Maarten involving machetes is "alarmingly" high.
The Prosecutor said the defendant had escaped and could not be found by the police for a considerable time. Based on the psychologist's report, the Prosecutor said chances were high that the defendant would commit similar crimes in the future and called for a four-year prison sentence.
Attorney-at-law Geert Hatzmann started his pleadings in stating that he would support his client, but that his "conspiracy theory" should be taken off the table. This, however, did not mean the lawyer was not critical of the investigations in his client's case.
Hatzmann said it was "strange" that in a multi-lingual society as St. Maarten, in which police officers often speak three or four languages, Spanish-speaking persons are questioned in their mother tongue, whereas the reports of interrogations are invariably written in Dutch.
The lawyer made a plea for the introduction of audio-visual recordings of interrogations, which he said would contribute to finding the truth and also to a fair trial.
He called for a lower sentence as the absence of a proper and reliable translation put the defence at a disadvantage.
Hatzmann, who was critical of the psychologist's report, also pointed out that more than two years had passed since the incident. He said there was no chance of his client committing another crime in St. Maarten as the illegal resident would be expelled to the Dominican Republic. The Court will give its opinion September 9.
