While his former lover and co-convict Bibi Sharima-Gopaul will have to spend 25 years behind bars for the gruesome murder of her 16-year-old daughter Neesa Gopaul, Jarvis Small has been cleared of all culpability.
He will now be freed, owing to the finding by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) today that his trial seven years ago for the murder of the former Queen’s College student was plagued by prejudicial evidence.
The Trinidad-based final appellate court for Guyana in its ruling this afternoon said that the prejudicial evidence led by the prosecution against Small rendered his conviction unsafe.
It, however, affirmed Gopaul’s conviction but reduced a 45-year sentence which had been imposed by the Guyana Court of Appeal to 25 years.
She had initially been sentenced to 106 years following her trial.
More than a decade on, Neesa’s killing, which had caused public outrage, continues to attract widespread attention locally.
Following the discovery of her battered body stuffed in a suitcase dumped at a creek along the Soesdyke/Linden Highway, several non-governmental organizations came out in protest saying that the “system had failed her.”
At the trial, the High Court had heard that Neesa had made several police reports of Small sexually assaulting her.
Pathologist Dr. Nehaul Singh, who performed the autopsy on the teen’s body, had testified that she was missing 50% of her head and that the multiple blunt trauma that caused her death had been forcefully inflicted.
