Wife killer jailed for 12 years

In passing sentence, Carmona said that the accused behaved like a "raging bull" when he attacked his wife and stabbed her seven times.

Carmona said that the court cannot help but view this domestic tragedy with great disquiet. "Time and again it is characterised as a crime of passion."

Turning to Yearwood, Carmona said, "she was a life, fully entitled to the protection of the law and likewise, yourself."

The judge also added, "There appears to be a premature mindset among some men in Trinidad and Tobago that when a woman leaves a man, she must be "done" (killed) — her life and limb become expendable and she can be killed or maimed. Regrettably, marriages do flounder and husband and wife may fall out of love, but it does not give either spouse the right to take the others’ life." He recalled that this country is subjected to reports of women being murdered by jealous lovers and being maimed with acid. And it seems that sentencing being employed by the court appears not to have had the desired impact, as the killing of a spouse goes on callously and unabated.

He told Yearwood that the killing of his wife was "a very senseless act. I have taken into consideration the various statements that you made, and all that your attorney has mentioned. You behaved like a raging bull, no doubt smarting from the provocative situation you found yourself in. This court cannot become complacent in its sentencing regime, but has to be alive to society’s dilemma. However, the court does not have to reflect public opinion. On the other hand, the court must not disregard it. Perhaps the main duty of the court is to lead public opinion and anyone who surveys the criminal scene at the present time must be alive to the appalling problem of violence, and society expects the courts to deal with violence."

Carmona also told Yearwood that he was responsible for the demise of a human being, and he had to live with that torment for the rest of his life. In this matter, the judge said, the court must signal its contempt for this kind of behaviour, but he did acknowledge Yearwood’s situation. However, Carmona recalled that the penalty for unlawful killing is life imprisonment in a worst case scenario, and a term of years in others.

He said he has taken into consideration all the mitigating factors, "so remarkably elucidated by his counsel Dana Seetahal," but "prisoner at the Bar, you must be punished so that others must be deterred from taking human lives."

Carmona said that the court appreciated the fact that there were trying circumstances, but the court does not feel that domestic problems should be settled in that fashion. There are other lawful and reasonable ways to deal with such matters, and no one ought to be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Yearwood, 37, of Don Miguel Road, El Socorro, had stabbed his wife to death at her mother’s home in Barataria on October 10, 2003.