USA National Who Allegedly Killed Wife Denied Bail
The United States of America (USA) national charged for allegedly murdering his wife in Fiji last year was denied bail by the High Court in Lautoka on Friday.
The accused, Bradley Robert Dawson, allegedly murdered his wife, Christe Chen, also a USA national, while on a luxurious honeymoon on Turtle Island Resort in the Yasawas on July 9, 2022.
The accused appeared before High Court Judge, Justice Riyaz Hamza.
He had pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder in September last year and has been remanded since July 10.
Justice Hamza told the accused that he had considered all the facts and denied him bail because he was worried about him being at flight risk.
The case had to be fixed early for trial this year because it would balance the scale of justice.
Justice Hamza said that Ms Chen’s death certificate confirmed that she died because of severe traumatic head injury and multiple traumatic injuries caused by blunt force trauma to the head.
“Since there is a domestic relationship between the applicant and the deceased in the substantive matter, the presumption in favour of granting bail is displaced in this case,” Justice Hamza said. The accused has all family and employment ties in the USA and he was also employed as an information technology and system administrations officer.
Another reason the court refused bail was because it was not satisfied with the proposed sureties – the first surety, a pastor, whom he got to know from his visits to the Lautoka Remand Centre, and the second surety, a friend of the accused who agreed to act for the accused as he had no immediate friends of family in Fiji.
Justice Hamza added that if the court was satisfied with both sureties, the primary concern would still be the accused being at flight risk.
In the substantive matter, prosecutor, Alvin Singh said the state had filed and served the disclosures to the defence. Defence counsel, Samuela Heritage confirmed receiving the documents. Mr Singh sought 21 days from the court to propose agreed facts plus the Pre-Trial Conference (PTC) checklist.
Justice Hamza assured both counsels that this year the court would vacate some cases to fix the case of Dawson for trial as early as possible.
The matter has been adjourned to February 22.