A woman, who has spent the past three decades in prison for helping to kill two men in separate incidents a month apart in 1993, has challenged a judge’s decision to refuse to review her sentence for one of the crimes.
Appellate Judges Malcolm Holdip, Gillian Lucky and Carla Brown-Antoine reserved their judgment in Natasha De Leon’s appeal after hearing submissions yesterday during a hearing at the Hall of Justice in Port-of-Spain.
In November 1995, De Leon and her common-law husband Darrin Thomas were convicted of murdering Chandranath Maharaj.
Maharaj, a taxi driver from Princes Town, 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 High Court Judge Hayden 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 the 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 was 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.
She was sentenced to life imprisonment and ordered not to be released before serving 20 years.
De Leon 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.
In the appeal, De Leon’s lawyers led by Peter Carter claimed that Justice St Clair-Douglas was wrong to refuse to review her sentence for Dookoo’s killing.
The judge had claimed that the Advisory Committee on the Power of Pardon (the Mercy Committee) should conduct the review.
Presenting submissions yesterday, Carter claimed her constitutional right to a fair hearing by an independent tribunal had been infringed.
He claimed that the judge had the inherent jurisdiction to review the sentence after the minimum term elapsed.
Responding to the case, attorney Tracy Vidale, who represented the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), said the judge could not be faulted as she claimed that De Leon did not have a right of appeal over his refusal.
Vidale invited the judges to help define the legal parameters of a life sentence as the case would set a legal precedent.
Although Vidale presented the appeal, she admitted that the “groundwork” was done by former special prosecutor Randall Hector.
Hector was murdered after leaving a church service in Port-of-Spain on December 31, last year.
