PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – A 26-year-old man has been found not guilty of two charges of illegally obtaining examination papers of the Barbados-based Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC).
Magistrate Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds, sitting in the San Fernando Magistrate Court, south of here, Monday dismissed the charges against Mikquel Torres, who had been charged with unlawfully procuring the May/June 2008 CXC Mathematics and English examination papers.
Torres, who did not testify in a trial, had earlier pleaded not guilty. He had been on one million TT dollars bail (One TT dollar =US$0.16 cents) after he was charged with the offences on May 22, 2008.
Torres was among several people charged with procuring examination papers relating to the 2008 CXC examinations. These matters were all dismissed last year.
In 2008, more than 20,000 pupils had to re-sit the Mathematics and English examination which were rescheduled because of the leaked papers.
Witnesses from the CXC and the Ministry of Education as well as two police officers testified during the trial.
Torres’s attorney had made a no case submission but the magistrate overruled the submission. However she said the prosecution had failed to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.