Life sentences for cousins

Deenish Benjamin and Deochan Ganga challenged their convictions based on their mental capacity and the appellate court was asked to consider whether Benjamin, 36, and Ganga, 35, had the mental capacity to participate in their trial and to give police confessions to the crime.

Delivering a 43-page judgment, Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Appellate Judges Rajendra Narine and Prakash Moosai dismissed their appeal and held that both men were fit to stand trial for the murder of their cousin Sunil Ganga.

Benjamin and Ganga were convicted and sentenced to death on December 4.

Sunil died on July 12, 2003, after being beaten and hanged in a shed behind his Penal home, next to Benjamin and Ganga’s home.

During the trial, Sunil’s wife, Roseanne, testified she saw both men entering the shed before her husband’s death.

It was the State’s case that both men confessed while under interrogation from police, but they both denied that while on trial, claiming they were mistakenly identified by Roseanne.

In their ruling, the appeal court judges refused to quash their convictions and order a retrial but instead commuted their mandatory death sentences to life sentences with a minimum term of 30 years.

They may be released in 2033 as they have already spent 14 years in prison.

“We have considered the fact that both appellants were young men at the time of the commission of the crime and are still relatively young.

We are therefore minded to leave open the possibility of release,” Moosai, who wrote the judgment, said.

During the hearing of their appeal in February 2014, British mental health experts Drs Tim Green and Richard Latham were called as defence witnesses and claimed that the duo should not have been put on trial due to their learning disabilities.

“Notwithstanding an undisputed finding of mild learning disability, a legitimate criticism that can be levelled against the experts is their failure or omission to interview Benjamin’s family/or friends (and Ganga’s for that matter) to provide objective verification for a significant component of their diagnosis,” Moosai said in the ruling of the experts’ testimony.

The cousins were represented by Keith Scotland, Daniel Khan and Asha Watkins-Montserin.