Though initially sentenced to 70 years behind bars for the 2009 murder of a grasscutter, Lloyd Rampersaud will now only have to serve 30 years following a judgement by the Appeal Court that the original sentence was “unduly harsh”.
A panel of judges, including Chancellor of the Judiciary Yonette Cummings-Edwards, allowed the appeal to reduce Rampersaud’s sentence. It was declared that the 70 years’ sentence imposed by Justice Navindra Singh was “unduly harsh”.
In 2013, Rampersaud was found guilty of the February 2009 murder of Munilall Mangru and was sentenced to imprisonment by Justice Singh. However, Rampersaud through his lawyer George Thomas thereafter moved to the Court of Appeal to challenge the conviction and sentence.
According to reports, Rampersaud was seen beating Mangru, 42, a grasscutter, at a bridge linking Mon Repos and Triumph, East Coast Demerara. Mangru’s body was later found lifeless under the said bridge. In December 2018 when the appeal was heard, Thomas had argued that he observed major inconsistencies in the evidence of his client’s co-accused, Shaeed Baksh called ‘Towley’, and the dead man’s sister.
According to Thomas, Baksh testified to the incident occurring on February 21, 2009. However, he said, the dead man’s sister had testified to seeing her brother looking normal the next day. Further, Thomas had highlighted that the sister testified to only seeing her brother with injuries about his face on February 24, 2009.
As such, Thomas had contended that the trial judge failed to properly direct the jurors on how to consider this evidence.
Thomas had further contended that, from the time Baksh said the incident occurred (February 21) to the time that Mangru’s sister saw his injuries (February 24), there is the possibility that Mangru could have been injured by someone else.
Therefore, he said, his client should not be blamed for the fatal injuries.
Chancellor of the Judiciary Yonette Cummings-Edwards, who heard the appeal together with Justices of Appeal Dawn Gregory and Rishi Persaud, had deemed the lawyer’s arguments a “major discrepancy”. Senior State Counsel Teshanna Lake had held that Rampersaud confessed to his role in a caution statement which was admitted into evidence by the trial judge.
According to Lake, during the trial the pathologist testified that the injuries Mangru sustained were consistent with those Rampersaud said he had inflicted. “Me lash he with a piece of wood on he face and me see he tongue come out. Towley then cuff he up pon he face and me then tek out all he money,” Lake said Rampersaud admitted in his caution statement.
The prosecutor maintained that Mangru was injured on February 21, 2009, noting that the pathologist explained that a normal person receiving injuries such as those inflicted on Mangru would have died within minutes. But the Chancellor had questioned the possibility of Mangru being abnormal.
