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Vasyli trial date due to be set today

Donna Vasyli at an earlier court appearance.

Donna Vasyli at an earlier court appearance.

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

A TRIAL date is to be set today for a woman currently on remand in connection with her Australian husband’s murder.

Donna Vasyli, 54, is scheduled to appear before Senior Justice Stephen Isaacs for a fixture hearing for her trial into the fatal stabbing of millionaire podiatrist Phillip Vasyli on March 24.

Supreme Court calendars for available trial dates are now into 2018, however an earlier tentative date may be made.

Mr Vasyli, 59, was found dead at the couple’s Old Fort Bay home with multiple stab wounds. He was the owner of four podiatry clinics – three in Sydney, Australia, and one at the Old Fort Bay Medical Centre in New Providence.

His wife was arraigned six days later charge with his murder.

Parliament mandates that a person charged with murder be tried within three years of detention so as not to breach an individual’s constitutional right to trial within a reasonable time.

The Court of Appeal, however, has determined that a suspect should not be on remand awaiting trial for more than two years.

The Australian widow has been in the state’s custody for three months.

Senior Justice Isaacs denied her bail within days of her March 30 arraignment in Magistrate’s Court and then a second occasion on May 1 after the Court of Appeal had remitted the matter back to him to explicitly state why he had denied bail.

The appellate court has since rejected her second bail appeal, prompting her lawyers Murrio Ducille and Elliot Lockhart, QC, to consider the option of taking the case to the London-based Privy Council for a final decision.

The fixture hearing is scheduled for 10am.

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