More than three decades after the brutal death of a senior government official shocked Antigua, the courts have finally closed the book on one of the country’s most enduring criminal cases.

The Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal of Everton Welch, the Gray’s Farm man who was convicted in 1994 of murdering Rolston Samuel, the then-Comptroller of Customs.

Samuel was killed on January 8, 1993 at his Friars Hill home — a property that overlooked both St. John’s Harbour and the Oil Refinery. When his body was discovered, he had suffered catastrophic injuries: serious wounds to his neck, head and fingers, multiple broken facial bones, and injuries consistent with repeated blows from a heavy object. The killing of a man of his stature sent ripples through Antiguan society and set in motion a prosecution that would take years to conclude and decades more to fully resolve.

The case that followed was substantial. Led by Jamaican Maurice James, who served as Director of Public Prosecutions, and with Welch represented by Attorney Harold Lovell, the trial lasted several days before a jury of five women and four men returned a guilty verdict on June 21, 1994 — after roughly two hours of deliberation. In passing sentence, the presiding judge acknowledged one significant mitigating factor: Welch had been just 17 years old at the time of the offence. That alone spared him the maximum penalty. He was ordered to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

That might have been the end of it, but in 2019 Welch successfully won the right to file a constitutional motion challenging whether his sentencing had been lawful. The issue was specific and procedural — he had not been present when his sentence was formally handed down in May 2015, and his lawyers argued that this absence violated his constitutional right to be present at his own trial.

The Court of Appeal agreed with him on the narrower point. It found that Welch had never been properly informed that his sentencing would proceed on May 27, 2015, and that without that knowledge he could not be said to have consented to it going ahead without him. The judges were also critical of his legal counsel at the time, finding that the attorney had failed in his duty to inform the presiding judge that he had not been in contact with his client, and had neither sought an adjournment nor obtained Welch’s instructions before the hearing proceeded.

But the Court drew a clear distinction between a procedural failing and an unfair trial. The judges ruled that the central question was not whether Welch had formally waived his rights, but whether — viewed in its entirety — he had still received a fair process. On that question, they found that he had. By the time of the May 2015 hearing, all substantive sentencing submissions had already been fully argued before the court two weeks earlier, with Welch present. The only remaining business was the delivery of a written judgment. Welch’s attorney was in court throughout, raised no objection and made no application to adjourn — a presence the Court found sufficient to protect his client’s interests.

The appeal was dismissed with no order as to costs. Welch has already served his sentence however, and was released several years ago.