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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Woman convicted of 2 murders challenges judge’s refusal to review sentence

by

Derek Achong
35 days ago
20250122

A woman, who has spent the past three decades in prison for help­ing to kill two men in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents a month apart in 1993, has chal­lenged a judge’s de­ci­sion to refuse to re­view her sen­tence for one of the crimes.

Ap­pel­late Judges Mal­colm Holdip, Gillian Lucky and Car­la Brown-An­toine re­served their judg­ment in Natasha De Leon’s ap­peal af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions yes­ter­day dur­ing a hear­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain.

In No­vem­ber 1995, De Leon and her com­mon-law hus­band Dar­rin Thomas were con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Chan­dranath Ma­haraj.

Ma­haraj, a taxi dri­ver from Princes Town, was mur­dered in a rob­bery on Feb­ru­ary 6, 1993. The cou­ple trav­elled to San Fer­nan­do and pre­tend­ed to be pas­sen­gers.

Hours lat­er, Ma­haraj’s body was found dumped in the sea close to the wharf in San Fer­nan­do. His car was found aban­doned.

An au­top­sy re­vealed that he had been stabbed sev­er­al times and his throat was slit.

Thomas and De Leon, who was 18 years old and preg­nant at the time of Ma­haraj’s mur­der, re­ceived the manda­to­ry death penal­ty.

In 2008, their sen­tences were com­mut­ed to life im­pris­on­ment based on the land­mark Privy Coun­cil rul­ing in the Ja­maican case of Pratt and Mor­gan. In that case, the British Law Lords ruled that it would be cru­el and un­usu­al pun­ish­ment for the death penal­ty to be ex­e­cut­ed five years af­ter con­vic­tion.

In late Jan­u­ary, last year, De Leon was re-sen­tenced by High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas based on an­oth­er Privy Coun­cil judg­ment di­rect­ing that con­vict­ed mur­der­ers who ben­e­fit from com­mut­ed sen­tences should be sen­tenced to a def­i­nite prison term as op­posed to a blan­ket sen­tence for the re­main­der of their nat­ur­al life.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas de­cid­ed on a 33-year sen­tence for the crime. It meant that De Leon on­ly had a few years left on her sen­tence con­sid­er­ing the time she al­ready spent in prison be­fore and af­ter her con­vic­tion.

Dur­ing the re-sen­tenc­ing, De Leon re­quest­ed that he re­view her manslaugh­ter sen­tence for killing an­oth­er taxi dri­ver Lam­bert Dookoo.

A suc­cess­ful re­view would have en­sured that she was im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased af­ter com­plet­ing the sen­tence for Ma­haraj’s mur­der.

Dookoo was mur­dered al­most a month af­ter Ma­haraj and in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances.

Thomas, De Leon and her broth­er An­dre were ini­tial­ly charged with mur­der but in 2001 Thomas was ac­quit­ted while the sib­lings were con­vict­ed of the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter.

She was sen­tenced to life im­pris­on­ment and or­dered not to be re­leased be­fore serv­ing 20 years.

De Leon was al­so fac­ing tri­al for mur­der­ing Ruben Paul Jaskaran, who was killed in De­cem­ber 1992.

How­ev­er, a High Court Judge stayed the case in 2006 due to a 13-year de­lay in bring­ing it to tri­al.

In the ap­peal, De Leon’s lawyers led by Pe­ter Carter claimed that Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas was wrong to refuse to re­view her sen­tence for Dookoo’s killing.

The judge had claimed that the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on the Pow­er of Par­don (the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee) should con­duct the re­view.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions yes­ter­day, Carter claimed her con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a fair hear­ing by an in­de­pen­dent tri­bunal had been in­fringed.

He claimed that the judge had the in­her­ent ju­ris­dic­tion to re­view the sen­tence af­ter the min­i­mum term elapsed.

Re­spond­ing to the case, at­tor­ney Tra­cy Vi­dale, who rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), said the judge could not be fault­ed as she claimed that De Leon did not have a right of ap­peal over his re­fusal.

Vi­dale in­vit­ed the judges to help de­fine the le­gal pa­ra­me­ters of a life sen­tence as the case would set a le­gal prece­dent.

Al­though Vi­dale pre­sent­ed the ap­peal, she ad­mit­ted that the “ground­work” was done by for­mer spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor.

Hec­tor was mur­dered af­ter leav­ing a church ser­vice in Port-of-Spain on De­cem­ber 31, last year.


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