A man, con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing a taxi dri­ver from Princes Town in 1993, is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased from prison in one and a half years.

Dar­rin Thomas was in­formed of his re­main­ing time in prison as he was re-sen­tenced by High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas on Wednes­day.

In No­vem­ber 1995, Thomas and his com­mon-law wife Natasha De Leon were con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Chan­dranath Ma­haraj.

Ma­haraj was mur­dered in a rob­bery on Feb­ru­ary 6, 1993.

The cou­ple trav­elled to San Fer­nan­do and pre­tend­ed to be pas­sen­gers.

Hours lat­er, Ma­haraj's body was found dumped in the sea close to the wharf in San Fer­nan­do. His car was found aban­doned.

An au­top­sy re­vealed that he had been stabbed sev­er­al times and his throat was slit.

Thomas and De Leon, who was 18-years-old and preg­nant at the time of Ma­haraj's mur­der, re­ceived the manda­to­ry death penal­ty.

In 2008, their sen­tences were com­mut­ed to life im­pris­on­ment based on the land­mark Privy Coun­cil rul­ing in the Ja­maican case of Pratt and Mor­gan. In that case, the British Law Lords ruled that it would be cru­el and un­usu­al pun­ish­ment for the death penal­ty to be ex­e­cut­ed five years af­ter con­vic­tion.

In late Jan­u­ary, last year, De Leon was re-sen­tenced by Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas based on an­oth­er Privy Coun­cil judg­ment di­rect­ing that con­vict­ed mur­der­ers who ben­e­fit from com­mut­ed sen­tences should be sen­tenced to a def­i­nite prison term as op­posed to a blan­ket sen­tence for the re­main­der of their nat­ur­al life.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas de­cid­ed on a 33-year sen­tence for the crime. It meant that De Leon on­ly had a few years left on her sen­tence con­sid­er­ing the time she al­ready spent in prison be­fore and af­ter her con­vic­tion.

Dur­ing her re-sen­tenc­ing, De Leon re­quest­ed that he re­view her manslaugh­ter sen­tence for killing an­oth­er taxi dri­ver Lam­bert Dookoo.

A suc­cess­ful re­view would have en­sured that she be im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased af­ter com­plet­ing the sen­tence for Ma­haraj's mur­der.

Dookoo was mur­dered al­most a month af­ter Ma­haraj and in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances.

Thomas, De Leon and her broth­er An­dre were ini­tial­ly charged with mur­der but in 2001 Thomas was ac­quit­ted while the sib­lings were con­vict­ed of the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter.

De Leon was sen­tenced to life im­pris­on­ment and or­dered not to be re­leased be­fore serv­ing 20 years.

She was al­so fac­ing tri­al for mur­der­ing Ruben Paul Jaskaran, who was killed in De­cem­ber 1992.

How­ev­er, a High Court Judge stayed the case in 2006 due to a 13-year de­lay in bring­ing it to tri­al.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas re­fused to con­duct the re­view as he claimed that the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on the Pow­er of Par­don (the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee) should con­duct it.

Last month, the Court of Ap­peal re­served its judg­ment in an ap­peal from De Leon chal­leng­ing the judge's de­ci­sion.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for Thomas, Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas be­gan with a start­ing point of 35 years based on the bru­tal­i­ty of the crime.

Not­ing that Thomas had "ma­tured im­mense­ly" while in prison, Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas not­ed that he par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cours­es and on­ly had one dis­ci­pli­nary in­frac­tion.

He re­duced the sen­tence by 18 months be­fore de­duct­ing the al­most 32 years he al­ready spent in prison, leav­ing Thomas with the re­main­ing sen­tence.

Thomas was rep­re­sent­ed by Chimere Gib­son-Wa­di, of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers De­part­ment (PDD). The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion (DPP) was rep­re­sent­ed by Tri­cia Samuel.