JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Convicted murderer demands immediate release from prison

by

161 days ago
20240813
High Court Judge Carol Gobin

High Court Judge Carol Gobin

A man who was re­cent­ly re-sen­tenced for the mur­ders of three of his rel­a­tives has claimed that he should be im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased from prison. 

Late last month, 39-year-old Daniel Agard was giv­en a 28-year sen­tence for mur­der­ing his great-grand­moth­er, great-aunt and great-un­cle in 2001. 

How­ev­er, he was left with a re­main­ing sen­tence of five years and four months af­ter the time he al­ready served in prison was de­duct­ed. 

Af­ter his re-sen­tenc­ing, Agard filed a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit al­leg­ing that he would have com­plet­ed the sen­tence if he was grant­ed re­mis­sion by prison of­fi­cials. 

Un­der the re­mis­sion pro­ce­dure, sen­tences are re­duced based on con­victs’ be­hav­iour whilst in prison. 

Last week, Agard was grant­ed leave by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in to pur­sue the law­suit. 

His case, which was deemed fit for ur­gent hear­ing dur­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry’s an­nu­al va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing on Fri­day. 

Agard and Lester Pittman were ac­cused of mur­der­ing agri­cul­tur­al con­sul­tant John Crop­per, his moth­er-in-law Mag­gie Lee, 68, and sis­ter-in-law Lynette Lith­gow-Pear­son, 57.

Crop­per was Agrad’s great-un­cle, Mag­gie Lee was his great-grand­moth­er, and Lith­gow-Pear­son was his great-aunt. 

The three rel­a­tives were killed at Crop­per’s Cas­cade home in De­cem­ber 2001. Their bod­ies were found by Crop­per’s house­keep­er the fol­low­ing day. 

They were all bound and gagged with elec­tri­cal wire and their throats had been slit. 

Lith­gow-Pear­son, a for­mer tele­vi­sion broad­cast­er with the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC) and her moth­er were found in the same room, while Crop­per was found in the bath­tub. 

Crop­per’s wife An­gela, a for­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor and deputy di­rec­tor of the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­gramme was not at home at the time of the mur­ders. In No­vem­ber 2012, she died in Lon­don af­ter a pro­tract­ed ill­ness. 

In 2004, Agard and Pittman were con­vict­ed of the triple mur­der. 

The Court of Ap­peal even­tu­al­ly quashed Agard’s con­vic­tion and or­dered a re­tri­al but up­held Pittman’s con­vic­tion. 

Pittman suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged his con­vic­tion be­fore the Privy Coun­cil, with the British Law Lords re­mit­ting the case to the Ap­peal Court for them to con­sid­er whether his con­vic­tion was safe con­sid­er­ing new ev­i­dence over his men­tal state. 

The Ap­peal Court even­tu­al­ly up­held Pittman’s con­vic­tion but sen­tenced him to life im­pris­on­ment with a min­i­mum term of 40 years be­fore he could be re­leased. 

Agard was again con­vict­ed on his re­tri­al. 

While he was ini­tial­ly giv­en the manda­to­ry death penal­ty, the sen­tence was com­mut­ed af­ter the five-year pe­ri­od for law­ful­ly car­ry­ing it out ex­pired.

His re-sen­tenc­ing ex­er­cise was as a re­sult of a land­mark Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion from 2022, in which the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court ruled that con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, who can­not be ex­e­cut­ed be­cause of de­lays in car­ry­ing out the manda­to­ry sen­tence for mur­der, should re­ceive de­fin­i­tive prison terms as op­posed to com­mut­ed sen­tences for the re­main­der of their lives. 

In pass­ing the sen­tence on Agard, High Court Judge Gillian Scot­land raised con­cerns over his abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety when he com­pletes his sen­tence. 

Jus­tice Scot­land point­ed to Agard’s fail­ure to par­tic­i­pate in prison train­ing pro­grammes and his mul­ti­ple breach­es of prison rules. 

She sug­gest­ed that he still had time to im­prove and par­tic­i­pate in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes.

“There are is­sues of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion that need to be ad­dressed be­fore he is re­leased,” she said.

In his law­suit, Agard is con­tend­ing that the prison rules re­lat­ed to re­mis­sions were not prop­er­ly ap­plied to him. 

“The prison au­thor­i­ties wrong­ful­ly cal­cu­lat­ed the term of im­pris­on­ment I was re­quired to serve,” he said in his af­fi­davit at­tached to the law­suit. 

“I ac­cept that the State is en­ti­tled to pun­ish me for the crimes that I was found guilty of com­mit­ting, how­ev­er, the pow­er of the State to de­prive me of my lib­er­ty is lim­it­ed by the law­ful ex­e­cu­tion of the or­der of im­pris­on­ment that was im­posed on me,” he added. 

Agard is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ger­ald Ramdeen, Wayne Sturge, Lemuel Mur­phy, and Dayadai Har­ri­paul.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored