And, the DPP surely hopes the sentence is stiff enough to send a message to police officers who were key eyewitnesses to the Budna abduction. These are officers who are known to have made direct face to face contact with the abductors while they were on their mission to deliver him to Guatemala. But they offered no such evidence in the sworn statements given to police investigators. Whether they were encouraged to do so, or simply chose to do so from a position of self preservation - it has left the DPP with an investigative file which she candidly says amounts to "less than nothing":
Jules Vasquez
"Are you able to make any characterization of the file that's before you?"
Cheryl Lynn Vidal, Director of Public Prosecutions
"It is not a thin file. I too was expecting a thin file. IT is not a thin file. I was also expecting, and I apologize as a director for saying this, but I was always expecting that there would have been nothing in the file."
"What I was not expecting was that there would be less than nothing in the file, which is really my characterization of what has been put before me. But we are looking at the file as a team, and we are deciding where we're going to go from here."
Jules Vasquez
"But to be clear, I said the file would be thin. You said it is not. But yet you characterize the file that's having less than nothing."
Cheryl Lynn Vidal, Director of Public Prosecutions
"Yes, there can be words. The words can be of no effect. They can be words that really don't say anything."
Jules Vasquez "I know you can't speak prematurely, but will there be arrests?"
Cheryl Lynn Vidal, Director of Public Prosecutions
"Based on what was sent to me - at this very moment, there cannot possibly be an arrest of anyone because very few people saw anything and what they saw they're not too sure about what it was that they saw."
Jules Vasquez
"So at the moment, no, they can definitely not be an arrest of anyone at all."
But, at the moment does not mean in the future - and the DPP's office - which is additionally staffed with police officers - is known to doggedly follow up on cases in pursuit of justice. So much so, that defence attorneys have criticized her for it
Jules Vasquez
"There are certain attorneys, defense attorneys who traffic these courts, who accuse your office of being a sort of activist DPP, and they say that it's outside the remit or the scope..."
Cheryl Lynn Vidal, Director of Public Prosecutions
"They'll have to say it again, don't worry with the question."
Reliable reports are that staff from the DPP's office is already conducting its own investigative probes in an attempt to gather enough evidence to bring charges.
