Derek Achong

Two men from cen­tral Trinidad, sen­tenced to death for mur­der­ing a pun­dit dur­ing a home in­va­sion and rob­bery in 2007, have won their ap­peals against their con­vic­tions.

Ap­pel­late Judges Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon, Mark Mo­hammed and Prakash Moo­sai up­held Sunil Singh and Bal­dath Ram­per­sad’s ap­peal in June last year, but on­ly de­cid­ed the fate of their cas­es dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day.

The ap­peal pan­el ruled that Ram­per­sad should face a re­tri­al at a lat­er date while Singh’s mur­der con­vic­tion should be sub­sti­tut­ed for the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter based on the ev­i­dence in the case.

The pan­el did not set the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for Singh as it in­stead re­ferred the is­sue to a High Court Judge for de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Singh and Ram­per­sad are ac­cused of mur­der­ing 54-year-old Ka­mal Har­riper­sad on Au­gust 2, 2007.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed in the case, the duo met with a mu­tu­al friend Jagdeo Per­sad in Freeport and went to a hard­ware.

The own­er of the hard­ware, on­ly iden­ti­fied as “Guyanese,” re­port­ed­ly gave the duo in­struc­tions for Har­riper­sad to be beat­en.

The duo and Per­sad then went to Har­riper­sad’s home at St John Trace, Or­ange Field Road, Cara­pichaima.

Per­sad, who even­tu­al­ly gave ev­i­dence on be­half of the State, claimed that he wait­ed out­side by his car as the duo went in­side.

The duo al­leged­ly beat Har­riper­sad and de­mand­ed mon­ey and jew­el­ry.

Har­riper­sad’s wife Tara­matie Lochan al­leged­ly at­tempt­ed to in­ter­vene but was beat­en with a gun butt de­spite hand­ing over $300 and some jew­el­ry.

Per­sad claimed that when Singh and Ram­per­sad emerged from the house, Singh was bleed­ing from a wound to his hand.

The duo and Per­sad were op­posed by Har­riper­sad’s rel­a­tives, who heard the com­mo­tion and re­spond­ed, by they man­aged to es­cape af­ter they al­leged­ly threat­ened and beat them with their guns and cut­lass.

Per­sad claimed that af­ter drop­ping Ram­per­sad off, Singh claimed that he was in­jured when he un­suc­cess­ful­ly at­tempt­ed to stop him (Ram­per­sad) from chop­ping Har­riper­sad.

While both men raised five grounds of ap­peal each, on­ly one was up­held by the pan­el for Ram­per­sad and two for Singh.

The pan­el not­ed that the High Court judge, who presided over the duo’s tri­al in 2017, failed to seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the ju­ry in re­la­tion to Ram­per­sad, af­ter the fore­man pref­aced their ver­dict with the words “I be­lieve.”

“The tri­al judge ought go have in­ter­ro­gat­ed the is­sue fur­ther in or­der to ob­tain a more de­fin­i­tive re­sponse,” the pan­el said.

“The am­bi­gu­i­ty of the ver­dict re­lat­ed to the is­sue of sen­tenc­ing and the penal­ty to be im­posed, that is, the im­po­si­tion of the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for “clas­sic” mur­der and a pos­si­ble term of years for felony mur­der,” it added.

In terms of Singh, the ap­peal pan­el ruled that the judge failed to prop­er­ly ad­vise the ju­ry over their op­tion to con­vict him of manslaugh­ter based on his role in the crime.

“Had the ju­ry been prop­er­ly in­struct­ed in this re­gard they may have con­vict­ed Singh of the less­er charge. He was there­fore de­prived of the ben­e­fit of such a ver­dict and con­se­quent­ly, we are not sat­is­fied that the con­vic­tion was safe,” the pan­el said.

It al­so ruled that the judge placed un­due weight on in­crim­i­nat­ing ad­mis­sions made by Singh up­on his ar­rest while ig­nor­ing ex­cul­pa­to­ry claims.

“His (Singh) in­ter­ven­tion sug­gests that he had no in­ten­tion to kill or to cause re­al­ly se­ri­ous harm to the de­ceased but on­ly to cause him some harm by hit­ting him two slaps or giv­ing him some licks,” the pan­el said, as it not­ed that prop­er di­rec­tions by the judge may have led the ju­ry to find that Singh was guilty of manslaugh­ter as Ram­per­sad pos­si­bly di­verged from their plan.

Ram­per­sad was rep­re­sent­ed by Sophia Chote, SC and Pe­ter Carter while John Heath and Su­san Kaliper­sad rep­re­sent­ed Singh.

Tra­vers Sinanan and Mauri­cia Joseph rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).