A High Court judge on Tues­day sen­tenced four men to a to­tal of 54 years in jail for mur­der­ing a scrap iron deal­er who was robbed and beat­en "mer­ci­less­ly" al­most nine years ago.

Lau­ren Aguillera, 43; Shawn Bal­lai, 35; Evans Bal­lai, 26; and Richie Ay­ow, 26, plead­ed guilty last Ju­ly to mur­der on the ba­sis of the felony mur­der rule.

They gave con­fes­sion state­ments to the po­lice de­scrib­ing their in­volve­ment in the mur­der of Robert "Met­al Man" Ram­nath.

Ram­nath, 51, was found dead near a pump­ing jack in Erin on Au­gust 10, 2006.

A post mortem found Ram­nath sus­tained a mas­sive crush in­jury to the head, ex­ten­sive frac­tures to the skull and jaw bone, six lac­er­a­tions and abra­sions to the face.

The four ad­mit­ted that they had hatched a plan to rob Ram­nath. The pros­e­cu­tion's case led in the San Fer­nan­do First Crim­i­nal Court was that Aguillera called Ram­nath, telling him that they had cop­per to sell.

Ram­nath met the four men who took him to a bushy area to get the cop­per.

When they got there in Ram­nath's car, how­ev­er, the men robbed him.

De­scrib­ing the killing as cal­lous, Jus­tice Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas said gra­tu­itous vi­o­lence was met­ed out to Ram­nath who was beat­en "mer­ci­less­ly" even though he hand­ed over his mon­ey and begged for his life. His body was then thrown down a slope.

The men left in Ram­nath's car which they crashed and then went to Point Fortin to get some­thing to eat and drink.

They used vary­ing de­grees of vi­o­lence against Ram­nath, but the judge found that Aguillera was the mov­ing force be­hind the rob­bery and the most ag­gres­sive in the beat­ing.

The pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer's and bio-so­cial re­ports, the judge said, found that the pris­on­ers came from ei­ther bro­ken or sin­gle par­ent homes and had lim­it­ed ed­u­ca­tion.

Aguillera and Shawn had pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions.

If the mat­ter went to tri­al and they were found guilty, the judge said, 30 years would have been an ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence.

The judge, how­ev­er, de­duct­ed 25 per cent from that sen­tence be­cause of their guilty plea and al­so the eight years and six months that they were in cus­tody await­ing tri­al.

He al­so de­duct­ed a fur­ther two years from Ay­ow's sen­tence be­cause of his age at the time of the of­fence, his pre­vi­ous good char­ac­ter and the lim­it­ed role he played in the killing.

Ay­ow was sen­tenced to 12 years while his co-ac­cused were each sen­tenced to 14 years hard labour.

Aguillera was rep­re­sent­ed by lawyers Nigel Pil­grim and Giselle Lan­deau-Birm­ing­ham.

Shawn's lawyers were Rekha Ramjit and Maris­sa Bubb, while Evans Bal­lai was rep­re­sent­ed by Cedric Nep­tune and Bubb. Ay­ow was rep­re­sent­ed by Beecham Ma­haraj.