Justice Winston Patterson yesterday sentenced Mechel Skeete to 13 years imprisonment for killing her reputed husband by setting him ablaze while he lay in their bed at East Canje, Berbice, on May 14, 2006.
Skeete was found guilty of the lesser count of manslaughter by a mixed Berbice Assizes jury early last month.
Prior to sentencing Skeete, who was said to be under psychiatric treatment at the time of the offence, Justice Patterson listened to a probation report presented by Probation and Welfare Officer Mitford Ward and a plea of mitigation by Defence Counsel Charrandas Persaud.
Skeete showed no sign of emotion as the sentence was imposed on her but her relatives, some of whom had travelled from overseas, wept openly on hearing the penalty, which they viewed as harsh since the woman was a victim of abuse.
According to the probation report, Skeete is the ninth of 14 children born to Roger and Megan Skeete of Cumberland, East Canje, Berbice, and her life was marred by resentment, distrust and mental health issues.
Earlier, Justice Patterson had questioned how could one get around the agonizing pain Lincoln Gilead, who was a prison officer, may have experienced prior to his death.
“The act was cruel, but the court must be lenient as the prisoner was taking treatment from a psychiatrist. It was very traumatic for the children who were there when their father was set ablaze, while their mother fixed the curtains,” the judge commented.
Referring to the report by the probation and welfare officer, the judge said it was devoid of certain details.
“Key aspects that should have been condensed, were not. There is no reaction from the parents of either side, nor the children who were present,” Justice Patterson observed.
In his prepared report, Ward stated that Skeete had spent her formative years with her parents and siblings, and described her father as a quiet and reserved person who would counsel her whenever she erred, while her mother would scold her whenever the opportunity arose.
Conflicts between her parents were withheld from the knowledge of the children and were amicably resolved.
But Skeete harboured feelings of resentment from childhood since she was unhappy about the manner in which an unpleasant experience of hers was handled. She believed that her parents showed greater love for her other sisters than they did for her.
Her sisters, she related, were allowed to have visits by their boyfriends, while her boyfriend was not accepted by her family. She was also taken out of school by her parents because she insisted on having that relationship.
She said that while she was in Form Four at Berbice High School she was forced to leave the institution to assist her mother in the market where she was a vendor but during that time she secretly continued her relationship with Gilead, her now deceased reputed husband.
On her seventeenth birthday, she eloped with Gilead and established a common-law union which produced four children.
After giving birth to her second child, Skeete became ill, requiring psychiatric treatment. The nervous breakdown followed an allegation that her husband had fathered another child outside of their union. Since then, she continued to receive psychiatric treatment.
However, because of the side effects of the treatment she would often refuse to use the medication and so her condition would worsen. Although Skeete’s reputed husband had reportedly denied having the other child, she related that their relationship became turbulent from the time she had confronted him with that information.
However, over the years she made several attempts to have their issues resolved through the intervention of the officers of the Probation and Social Services Department. These attempts were futile because Gilead was never available for any of those meetings as he related that he could not get time off from his job as a prison officer.
As the relationship depreciated they were reportedly not even cooking together as a family and some of the children rebelled against her.
Skeete would also take aphrodisiacs found in her reputed husband’s possession to the Probation Office as evidence of his infidelity.
With respect to the offence, Skeete asked for forgiveness of all those who had been emotionally wounded because of the incident, especially her children. She expressed the hope that they will eventually overcome the pain inflicted.
And in his plea of mitigation, Defence Counsel Persaud appealed to the court for leniency. He noted that no amount of emotion or remorse, or money can compensate for the loss of the life of Gilead, Skeete’s reputed husband of eighteen years.
But the lawyer pleaded with the trial judge to consider the two minors, aged 14 and 11 years respectively, who will still need the guiding hand of a parent.
Persaud also drew to the court’s attention that his client had sought help from the Probation and Welfare Services but she still had to find ways to cope.
Where should a woman go to find security from domestic violence? he questioned. While acknowledging that he could not say his client did not commit the act, he urged the court to take cognizance of the fact that the act was committed while Skeete was taking psychiatric treatment.
Meanwhile, the case for the prosecution as presented by State Counsel Dionne Mc Cammon was that on May 14, 2006, the now deceased prison officer awoke one Edith Clarke, and having related something to her, was thereafter taken to the New Amsterdam Hospital.
At the hospital, burns were seen about his body as his skin peeled off. Gilead was transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital where he subsequently died, and the cause of death was recorded as septic burns and bronco-pneumonia; 75% of his body had been burnt.
Addressing the jury, Mc Cammon said the prosecution had satisfied the elements of the case in that it was the accused who had inflicted the injuries on the deceased, that the deceased died as a result of those injuries, and that he died within a day and a year of receiving those injuries.
In addition, the state counsel said that when the prisoner inflicted the injury on Gilead, she intended to kill him or cause grievous bodily harm, and the act was not done in self-defence, after provocation nor was it an accident.
Earlier, the defence counsel had urged the jury to believe that his client was innocent of the charge as there was no evidence to prove that she had a motive to commit such a dastardly act. “There is no malice aforethought,” he argued.
In addition, he said there was no confrontation between his client and the now deceased person, although they were both at the New Amsterdam Hospital where she was arrested.
