Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A man con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing his 16-year-old cousin a lit­tle over two decades ago, has lost his bid to se­cure his ear­ly re­lease from prison.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion on Tues­day, Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds de­clined to or­der Mar­cus Ja­son Daniel’s re­lease as part of his sen­tence re­view.

“I see no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to re­lease him on li­cense,” Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds said.

In De­cem­ber 2005, Daniel and a friend were con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing his cousin Suzette Gib­son on Jan­u­ary 23, 2002.

Daniel was sen­tenced to the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der, while his friend was de­tained at the court’s plea­sure as he was a mi­nor at the time of Gib­son’s mur­der.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed dur­ing his tri­al, hours be­fore the mur­der, Daniel and his friend picked up Gib­son af­ter her dance class end­ed.

Daniel, who ad­mit­ted that he was “drink­ing rum and lis­ten­ing to rock mu­sic” ear­li­er that day, drove to a des­o­late area of Blue Basin in Diego Mar­tin.

Daniel al­leged­ly sought to touch Gib­son, who pulled away.

Daniel and his friend took turns chok­ing Gib­son be­fore she was stabbed sev­er­al times and her throat was slit.

Daniel tes­ti­fied dur­ing his tri­al and claimed that he was “pos­sessed by a de­mon” when he killed Gib­son.

In 2012, his ap­peal was up­held by the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil, who ruled that the de­fence of di­min­ished re­spon­si­bil­i­ty should have been raised dur­ing his tri­al as he was sub­se­quent­ly di­ag­nosed with bor­der­line per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der and an­ti­so­cial per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der.

When the Court of Ap­peal re­con­sid­ered his case two years lat­er, it quashed his death sen­tence and or­dered that he serve a min­i­mum 25 years sen­tence be­fore he is el­i­gi­ble to be con­sid­ered for re­lease.

In de­cid­ing whether Daniel should be re­leased be­fore the dead­line set by the Ap­peal Court, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds not­ed that since be­ing re-sen­tenced, Daniel has not re­ceived treat­ment for his men­tal health is­sues while de­tained at the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal.

“He de­clines to en­gage in any ther­a­py that would re­quire self ex­am­i­na­tion,” she said, as she point­ed out that he tried to es­cape from the hos­pi­tal twice and was caught smug­gling con­tra­band items.

Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds not­ed that a re­cent psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion showed that Daniel pos­es a low to mod­er­ate risk of vi­o­lence in a struc­tured set­ting such as the hos­pi­tal and a mod­er­ate to high risk of vi­o­lence if re­turned to so­ci­ety.

As part of her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds or­dered that Daniel be de­tained at a prison fa­cil­i­ty cho­sen by the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er. She al­so promised to con­duct an­oth­er sen­tence re­view, next year.

Daniel was rep­re­sent­ed by Deputy Chief Pub­lic De­fend­er Raphael Mor­gan, while Char­maine Samuel rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).