The outcome of the daycare worker murder case on Wednesday is reminiscent of another similar matter less than a year ago, as well as several others, which seems to point to a pattern of undue leniency in the court system in matters involving the violent deaths of women and perhaps lethargy by public prosecutors, who, it appears, do anything but prosecute.
In the just concluded case, a Kuru Kuru man was jailed for 15 years for killing his reputed wife, daycare worker Lisa French, who was brutally stabbed to death on September 2, 2004 as she made her way home. The man, Junior Barton, who had been indicted for murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter well into the trial, and after the court allowed to be admitted into evidence a caution statement in which he said he had choked French. The prosecution accepted the guilty to manslaughter plea, effectively ending the trial and the quest for justice for the woman’s cruel death.
How this could have happened is mindboggling and the math just does not add up. For one thing, there was physical, forensic and other evidence that French did not die as a result of being choked; she had been knifed. For another, although it appears that there were no eyewitnesses, there obviously had been sufficient evidence against Barton in 2004. He was arrested and went through a preliminary inquiry (PI) which found that there was enough for him to be tried. Is it that somewhere between 2004 and now things went awry? Evidence was not preserved? Witnesses were no longer available? There are, as the song says, “more questions than answers”.
However, the fact remains that murder was committed on Lisa French; her killer should have been tried for just that.
The question is whether the sentence by Justice Dawn Gregory-Barnes aptly conveys the required punishment and whether the prosecution’s caving in doesn’t convey a totally different message. It is worth noting here that manslaughter can attract a sentence as high as 25 years.
In June last year, a 47-year-old former member of the Guyana Defence Force who had stabbed and killed an 18-year-old girl he had earlier been charged with raping was handed a ten-year sentence after he too pleaded guilty to manslaughter two days into his trial. What was worse was that in this instance there were eyewitnesses to the brutal crime, which occurred just two years prior in 2005.
Leroy McKoy had been charged with murder after he stabbed 18-year-old Omadela Peters twice in full view of several witnesses on a public street in her home village Ann’s Grove.
In this instance, the court had openly criticized the prosecution for accepting the manslaughter plea. Yet, Justice Jainarine Singh Jr, even with the benefit of a probation report that painted McKoy as a bully who had committed many acts of violence against women and seemed to be a law onto himself had not opted to hand down the maximum sentence. Again, what was the message here?
In February this year, Justice Roxanne George-Wiltshire sentenced a Lusignan man to ten years imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Roopnarine Singh had shot his wife, Rajdai Sookraj in the face at their East Coast Demerara home on March 31, 2005 following a misunderstanding. He had then told the police that bandits had broken into the home and murdered his wife. Following investigations, he was charged with murder. When the case was called in the High Court, he opted to plead guilty to manslaughter. A probation report had revealed that both Singh and his wife had been drinking prior to her demise. The prosecution’s case was that during a quarrel, Singh had shot the woman in the face then stood over her and shot at her four more times with his licensed shotgun. He then had a drink and went to sleep leaving her lying there. In spite of this, the prosecution had accepted a manslaughter plea.
On April 12, this year, 22-year-old Tamasha Riddle was found dead in her bed at Kaneville, East Bank Demerara having been suffocated and battered.
Her estranged reputed husband has since been arrested and charged with her murder. And just over three weeks ago, another 22-year-old, Shaneiza Khan, was found with her throat slit in her former home at Enmore, East Coast Demerara. In Khan’s case, she had made reports at the police station every day for seven days before she was brutally killed, apparently by her former reputed husband who has since disappeared. Prior to those reports, she frequented the station for four years complaining about domestic violence to no avail. Will these cases also follow the pattern noted above?
Last week, an 18-year-old waitress was found raped, naked and half-dead at the side of the road in Port Mourant, Berbice. Deokali Peter subsequently succumbed. There have been no arrests as yet in connection with her murder, but her mother, in an interview with this newspaper this week, vowed not to rest until those responsible have been caught and brought to justice. Given current trends, this mother may be consigning herself to a lifetime of unrest.
