Back in September, the trial against 51 year old Carlos Coze - the Nicaraguan doctor accused of spiking a male nurse's drink - began. But today, a no case submission was upheld by the court and the charge of administering an obnoxious substance was dismissed.
The virtual complainant testified that he did not remember much except that Dr Coze had been encouraging him to finish his drink and that he was later on Coze's verandah, with no recollection of how he arrived there. A test which was done on December 4th 2024 revealed that Benzodiazepine was found in the complainant's urine.
According to Coze's attorney, Richard "Dickie" Bradley, the charges were dropped since the Chief Magistrate noted that the prosecution could not prove whether Dr Coze tampered with his colleague's drink. In addition, the prosecution also had to prove that Coze unlawfully and knowingly administered the substance. Bradley explained more about the court's decision today.
Dickie Bradley, Attorney
"The allegation against Dr. Coze, for which he had suffered severely, is that he placed something in the accused's complainant's drink, and at the consequence, the complainant decided to take a test."
"The allegation is that something happened on the 29th of November in the night until the very early morning of the 30th of November of last year, and no tests were done until the 4th day of December."
"With nothing in between to establish any of the allegations, the person did not claim in court when he testified that he got sick, that he got whatever, and then the test happened like five, six days afterwards."
"If you take the 29th, there's no 31st of November, but on the 4th. There are other things I wish not to refer to, but it came out in cross-examination in questioning the complainant. There's a specific chemical that was located in the test done on the person who made the complaint several days afterwards."
"Now, we had a chance to question the persons who did the test. The security of urine from the very beginning would have been a big issue for us from the defense had the trial continued. The Mike Tyson issue would have been raised because nobody saw him actually doing a urine, but that was not at this stage, and the magistrate did not go down that road in relation to that matter."
"But the Chief Magistrate of the country is saying is that that gap between when the allegation and when the test, anything could have happened, that the onus is on the prosecution to prove every step of the way."
"She read the actual section, section 82 of the criminal code that the allegation is that he knowingly and unlawfully did something that had to do with anoxious substance getting in there. But from there, where is, you know, so the trial in terms of the evidence that was brought against Dr. Coze is insufficient in a court of law to just say, oh, this is what happened."
Dr Coze, who had been a general surgeon at KHMH, had his medical license taken away after the allegations were made against him.
