British QC to argue woman’s death row case

ANGELA RAMDEEN, the 40-year-old Chaguanas woman on death row for beating to death two children and burying them behind her farm has filed a constitutional motion to save her from being hanged. The case is set for hearing on September 13. Ramdeen will be represented at that hearing by attorney Anand Ramlogan who is acting in conjunction with British Queens Counsel Peter Carter and the solicitors from the London based firm of Simmons and Simmons. In her motion, Ramdeen is asking the court to find unfair and illegal, the refusal by the President on the advice of then National Security Minister Basdeo Panday, to refer her appeal back to the Court of Appeal. The killer has petitioned the court to find that her death sentence cannot be executed, that her sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, and that her continuing confinement on death row, awaiting execution, was illegal. Ramdeen has been on death row for more than six years. She was convicted and sentenced in January 1997, for the murders of eight-year-old Tulsie Varun and his seven-year-old sister, Sabrina Henwatee Dass. The murders took place on October 25, 1993, at Carlsen Field. In her application Ramdeen is contending that she has been kept in a cell as a condemned person sentenced to death beyond the period during which the sentence of death can lawfully be carried out.

The applicant has spent upwards of six years on death row since her conviction and sentence on January 14, 1997. In an affidavit filed by Samantha Abeysekera, a barrister of the London firm Simmons and Simmons, which is handling the case of the applicant, states Ramdeen has been on death row for more than five years and no decision had been made on her application under section (64) (2)(a) of the Supreme Court of judicature Act. According to Abeysekera, Simmons and Simmons wrote to the President of Trinidad and Tobago referring to the principle established in the case of Pratt and Morgan V Attornery-General for Jamaica, informing the President that according to the principles set out in paragraph 11 of the affidavit, the continuation of the death sentence imposed on the applicant was unconstitutional and contrary to two sections of the constitution. Simmons and Simmons therefore requested that the sentence of death passed on the applicant be commuted and an alternative sentence be substituted in its place. The case involving Ramdeen will raise the issue of the constitutional right of convicted prisoners.