(Trinidad Express) He could not bear the visualisation of his wife performing a sex act on another man, so a lorry driver from Barrackpore decided to beat and choke the woman to death in 2020.
It was not the first killing carried out by Ramesh ‘Blood’ Sieunarine.
He had also killed another lover in 2006 for which he was placed on a bond after his attorneys argued at trial that he was provoked into committing the crime.
When it came to the second killing, however, Sieunarine, was sentenced to 27 years’ hard labour by Justice Lisa Ramsumair- Hinds earlier this month.
That sentence was significantly reduced, though, after the judge granted him an automatic one-third deduction for his guilty plea to the offence of manslaughter.
Sieunarine also benefited from the time he had spent in pre-trial custody since 2020, as well as his good behaviour while incarcerated.
In the end, Justice Ramsumair- Hinds ordered that he is to spend 13 years, five months and 22 days for the killing of his second wife, Tricia Ramsaran-Ramdass.
Initially, Sieunarine was charged with Ramsaran Ramdass’ murder, but, based on consultation between his attorneys and those for the Office of the DPP, he was again allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter on the ground of provocation.
Sieunarine killed Ramsaran-Ramdass while he was in a drunken stupor during an argument about her fidelity on June 9, 2020.
Court documents stated that Sieunarine killed Ramsaran-Ramdass over her performing a sexual act on another man.
But Justice Ramsumair- Hinds stated during the sentencing exercise that the courts must signal a strong message to all in society that women cannot be killed simply because they wish to exercise sexual autonomy.
‘If the relationship is no longer a loving, committed and thriving one, the aggrieved party is free to leave and move on. The statistics suggest that we are not meeting the deterrent effect,’ said the judge.
It is for this reason the judge said she felt the necessary punishment was time in prison, and not a non-custodial sentence.
Mitigating factors
During the sentencing exercise, Justice Ramsumair- Hinds said she could find no further mitigating factors to further reduce Seunarine’s sentence, even though he claimed he was intoxicated at the time he carried out the latest killing.
While acknowledging that ‘alcoholism is a disease and can be a maladaptive coping mechanism for the stressors of life,’ she said when it ‘results in family violence and even extreme acts of violence, I cannot, in the circumstances of this prisoner, countenance it as a mitigating factor’.
Justice Ramsumair- Hinds said she also found as an aggravating factor the sentence imposed on Sieunarine following the killing of his first wife.
‘I am of the view that the conviction for unlawfully killing a previous wife was particularly aggravating. I accept that the prisoner successfully mitigated the loss of self-control involved in the killing of that previous wife, such that he was placed on a bond.
‘Respectfully though, at what point do we draw a line and colloquially say, ‘once is a mistake, but twice is a habit?’ This is the second wife to die by strangulation at this prisoner’s hands, and his explanation is the same – ‘she provoked me to kill her’.
‘I looked closely at the circumstances. The trigger involved in the provocation by the first wife he killed had to do with that woman’s attempt to kill his young son. As I said, the sentencing court at that time was persuaded by the weight of that mitigating factor. But what is his complaint this time? The papers suggest that he killed this wife because he couldn’t bear to visualise that she had performed fellatio on some other man,’ the judge said.
The judge went on to add that the court had to take into consideration that the killing was one that included gender- based violence and femicide; Ramsaran-Ramdass’ body was found nude at the back of their home; both the body and face bore marks of violence, which is evident in the photographs; and the post-mortem certificate revealed that the woman died of asphyxia, manual strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head.
Sieunarine was represented by attorneys Chimere Gibson-Wadi and Aleena Ramjag of the Public Defenders Department, while Charmaine Samuel and Guiliana Guy appeared for the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).