After being remanded to prison for just over a week on charges of unlicensed gun and ammunition possession, national cyclist Hamzah Eastman was on Thursday granted High Court bail in the sum of $150,000.
His application was presented before Justice Navindra Singh by attorney Bernard Da Silva.
On November 10th the 25-year-old appeared before Magistrate Leron Daly charged with having in his possession a .32 revolver and four matching live rounds of ammunition all without licence to which he pleaded not guilty.
He was denied bail.
The alleged find by lawmen is said to have been made at Cane View Avenue, Roxanne Burnham Gardens on November 7th.
In his bail application, Da Silva argued that given the “complexities” of the investigations and with his client’s matter likely to be protracted beyond the upcoming November 27th adjourned date, such a delay could be unfair, thereby denying the defendant a fair hearing within a reasonably time as he is constitutionally guaranteed.
The attorney said that the defendant is “aptly entitled” to rely on the presumption of innocence at this stage of the proceedings; and believed that bail favoured him, while adding that he was not averse to conditions being attached to the grant of bail, and that he does not pose a risk of flight either.
The lawyer had then gone on to advance that further delays in the matter could have forced his client to endure the conditions of incarceration.
This, he said, could have amounted to punishment before trial while arguing that the situation had the potential of causing Eastman to unnecessarily endure exposure to inhumane and unhygienic conditions, coupled with the exposure to the risk of contracting the Coronavirus while in prison.
Da Silva had argued, too, that while the allegation is serious, it is at this stage nothing more than just that, a mere allegation and that since Eastman’s incarceration there had been continuous significant economic loss to his family, as he is currently, the only breadwinner, because of restrictions associated with the Coronavirus.
The lawyer had also argued that his client had no previous brushes with the law.
