DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Three men from Guyana, con­vict­ed of kid­nap­ping and mur­der­ing a busi­ness­man be­fore dump­ing his body in a sep­tic tank, have been re­leased af­ter spend­ing over four decades in prison.

De­o­lal Sukhram, Gir­i­ja­dat Sew­per­saud, and Jainar­ine Per­saud were re­leased as they were re-sen­tenced by High Court Judge Tri­cia Hudlin-Coop­er on Wednes­day.

In Jan­u­ary 1988, the trio were con­vict­ed of the mur­der of Ash­ton Ramkha­lawans­ingh and were sen­tenced to death by hang­ing.

Six years lat­er, their manda­to­ry death sen­tences were com­mut­ed to life im­pris­on­ment based on the land­mark Ja­maican case of Pratt and Mor­gan, in which the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil ruled that it would be cru­el and un­usu­al pun­ish­ment for the sen­tence to be car­ried out five years af­ter con­vic­tions.

They were re-sen­tenced by Jus­tice Hudlin-Coop­er based on an­oth­er land­mark case, in which the Privy Coun­cil ruled that con­victs ben­e­fit­ing from its ear­li­er rul­ing should be giv­en def­i­nite prison terms in­stead of be­ing im­pris­oned un­til their even­tu­al deaths.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for the trio, Jus­tice Hudlin-Coop­er be­gan with a start­ing point of 45 years.

She de­duct­ed one year from the sen­tence as they had not been charged with a crime be­fore be­ing im­pli­cat­ed in Ramkha­lawans­ingh’s mur­der, and one year for them show­ing re­morse.

She re­duced the sen­tence by two years based on the trio’s suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes dur­ing their lengthy stint in prison. She al­so de­duct­ed one year for the trio be­ing forced to re­main on death row be­fore be­ing re-sen­tenced.

Jus­tice Hudlin-Coop­er or­dered their im­me­di­ate re­lease as she not­ed that they had al­ready com­plet­ed their fi­nal 40-year sen­tences.

In pass­ing the sen­tence, Jus­tice Hudlin-Coop­er ex­pressed hope that the trio would learn from their ex­pe­ri­ence in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and not re-of­fend.

“I hope you would take this ex­pe­ri­ence with you, that it would be­come a launch pad for bet­ter, and what­ev­er you do go­ing for­ward would be a tes­ta­ment to the change that can hap­pen if one ap­plies one­self and recog­nis­es not on­ly that an er­ror could be made but that change is the greater and more com­pelling agent go­ing for­ward,” Jus­tice Hudlin-Coop­er said.

“I trust that we do not ever have to hear your names in these parts,” she added.

Per­saud’s lawyer Daniel Khan, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as In­spec­tor of Pris­ons, thanked the judge for or­der­ing their re­lease.

“These pris­on­ers would hope­ful­ly go out in­to the open world and show that an in­di­vid­ual can make mis­takes and the most grave er­rors and can still go on to make a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to so­ci­ety,” Khan said.

“We are very grate­ful for that op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute,” he added.

Khan al­so com­mend­ed at­tor­ney Mark Seep­er­sad, who rep­re­sent­ed Sukhram and Sew­per­saud and pur­sued the re­cent land­mark case, which has led to scores of con­vict­ed mur­der­ers be­ing re-sen­tenced.

Ramkha­lawans­ingh went miss­ing in late March 1985.

Ramkha­lawans­ingh helped fi­nance a shoe store op­er­at­ed by Per­saud and where Sukhram and Sew­per­saud worked.

A day af­ter Ramkha­lawans­ingh’s dis­ap­pear­ance, his par­ents found a ran­som note at their premis­es de­mand­ing $100,000 for his safe re­lease.

His fam­i­ly left the mon­ey at the lo­ca­tion in­di­cat­ed in the note but record­ed the se­r­i­al num­bers of the $100 notes used.

Days lat­er, the trio fled to Guyana and re­port­ed­ly used Ramkha­lawans­ingh’s car to get to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

They were ar­rest­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers in Guyana af­ter a cus­toms of­fi­cer from that coun­try found Per­saud in pos­ses­sion of a large quan­ti­ty of T&T cur­ren­cy, which was sub­se­quent­ly linked to Ramkha­lawans­ingh’s kid­nap­ping through the se­r­i­al num­bers.

When they were ex­tra­dit­ed to Trinidad, the men all con­fessed their roles in kid­nap­ping and mur­der­ing Ramkha­lawans­ingh.

Po­lice of­fi­cers found his de­com­pos­ing body in a sep­tic tank at the prop­er­ty where Per­saud’s store was lo­cat­ed.

His head was cov­ered with a plas­tic bag and a length of wire was wrapped around his neck.

Per­saud was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Har­ry­nar­ine Singh.

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) was rep­re­sent­ed by Kateisha Am­brose-Per­sads­ingh.