Derek Achong

A man of south Trinidad, who ad­mit­ted to chop­ping the moth­er of his child dur­ing a do­mes­tic dis­pute in 2010, has been fined $5,000 and or­dered to pay $40,000 in com­pen­sa­tion. 

An­tho­ny Far­row, who en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) in March, re­ceived the sen­tence for at­tempt­ed mur­der from High Court Judge Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Fri­day.

Un­der the terms of the agree­ment, Far­row, who was ini­tial­ly charged with at­tempt­ed mur­der and wound­ing with in­tent, agreed to plead guilty to the sub­stan­tive charge in ex­change for the DPP’s Of­fice dis­con­tin­u­ing the lat­ter charge. 

State pros­e­cu­tor Danielle Thomp­son and Far­row’s de­fence at­tor­ney Pe­ter Carter sub­mit­ted a joint sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion in which they rec­om­mend­ed that he re­ceive the fine and pay the com­pen­sa­tion to the vic­tim, whose name was with­held to pro­tect her iden­ti­ty. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Ram­sumair-Hinds not­ed that she did not have to ac­cept the sen­tence rec­om­men­da­tion if she felt that it was too le­nient or harsh. 

Stat­ing that do­mes­tic and in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence was far too preva­lent in T&T, Ram­sumair-Hinds not­ed that she was re­luc­tant to ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tion as she felt that a non-cus­to­di­al sen­tence was in­ap­pro­pri­ate in the case con­sid­er­ing the Far­row was al­leged to have chopped the vic­tim three times dur­ing an ar­gu­ment over their then in­fant child. 

How­ev­er, she not­ed that there was very lit­tle lo­cal case law on the use of plea bar­gain­ing be­cause of its rel­a­tive­ly re­cent use, so she had to ap­ply Cana­di­an le­gal prece­dents which warned against in­ter­fer­ing with joint sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions un­less there were se­ri­ous pub­lic in­ter­est con­sid­er­a­tions. 

“I can not say that the joint rec­om­men­da­tion is so un­hinged that it would bring the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in­to dis­re­pute or lead right think­ing cit­i­zens to be­lieve that it has bro­ken down,” Ram­sumair-Hinds said. 

She not­ed that plea bar­gain­ing is an es­sen­tial el­e­ment of ef­fi­cient crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tems and could not be con­sid­ered to be a “nec­es­sary evil”. 

“There is noth­ing shame­ful in the prac­tice,” she said. 

In his sub­mis­sions dur­ing the hear­ing, Carter said that his client could af­ford to pay the fine forth­with but need­ed a pay­ment plan to pay the com­pen­sa­tion.

He al­so re­quest­ed that Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds in­clude pro­vi­sions that Far­row re­ceive a min­i­mal de­fault sen­tence if he missed an in­di­vid­ual month­ly pay­ment as un­der nor­mal con­di­tions an ac­cused per­son is giv­en a sub­stan­tial de­fault sen­tence and would not be re­quired to clear the bal­ance. 

Thomp­son did not ob­ject as she not­ed that the DPP’s Of­fice want­ed to en­sure that the vic­tim re­ceived the com­pen­sa­tion. 

“We do not in­tend to put the pris­on­er in a po­si­tion in which he is doomed to fail,” she said. 

As part of her sen­tence, Ram­sumair-Hinds stat­ed that he would re­ceive a two year sen­tence if he failed to pay the fine and would re­ceive a two week sen­tence for each missed $2,000 month­ly pay­ment of com­pen­sa­tion. 

The DPP’s Of­fice was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Rhea Lib­ert.