PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC:
LESS THAN 48 hours after the Trinidad and Tobago government announced plans to resume executions in a bid to deal with the rising crime problem, a Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of a convicted killer, who has been on death row for more than five years.
In addition, the Appeal Court has also ruled that the State would have to pay convicted killer, Angela Ramdeen, compensation because of the State's failure to inform her that she could no longer be executed.
Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma also ruled that Ramdeen was under no obligation to produce evidence to show what effect she suffered while awaiting execution.
"What is regarded as the likely effect of the death penalty and prolonged delay awaiting execution is sufficient. The likely effect of someone under sentence of death is that he would go through periods of agony alternating with periods of hope. To keep someone in that state over a prolonged period is to inflict upon him cruel and unusual punishment," the Court ruled.
STATE TO MEET LEGAL COSTS
The three-member Appeal Court in its 18-page judgment also ordered the State to meet the legal costs incurred by Ramdeen in the appeal. It also remitted her matter to the High Court for a sentencing hearing.
Ramdeen, 43, was convicted in 1997 of killing her lover's two children, who were beaten and then buried in bags at the back of her house in Carsen Field, east of here in 1993.
She filed a constitutional motion in 2003 seeking a declaration from the High Court that her continued detention on death row, awaiting execution after the expiration of five years was cruel and unusual punishment.
The High Court had ruled in her favour in December 2003, vacating the death sentence and commuting her sentence to life imprisonment and also that she should be compensated for her continued imprisonment on death row after five years.
The State appealed only one aspect of the judgment arguing that there was no evidence brought by the convicted killer to show that she suffered cruel and unusual punishment as a result of her prolonged detention on death row.
The Chief Justice said that Ramdeen was entitled to have her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment based on the principles outlined by the 1993 Privy Council ruling involving two Jamaicans, Pratt and Morgan.
That judgment said that to carry out the death penalty after the expiration of five years, where the cause was not caused by the prisoners themselves, would be unlawful since it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
