Why manslaughter plea?

Why was a man who confessed to the Police that he had shot and killed a woman as a contractual obligation allowed to plead guilty to the immeasurably lesser count of manslaughter? Yet Shaun Parris, who admitted that he had voluntarily given a statement that he had shot and killed his contracted victim, Dr Chandra Naraynsingh, as she left the Langmore Clinic on June 29, 1994, was granted the facility of his murder charge being amended to a manslaughter plea. Parris’ confession before a Justice of the Peace to accepting a fee of $10,000 for the job of killing Dr.Naraynsingh, and from his statement to the Police killed her for the money, was a brutal acknowledgement of a criminal mind.

He acknowledged in seeming matter of fact detail how he had been reportedly approached by two men, and had later consented to do what clearly to him had been just another ‘job.’ He could have been agreeing on a fee for the washing of a car or the changing of a washer for a water tap! Why did the State, which had originally charged Parris with murder, based principally on his statement to the Police, do a 180 degree turn on Wednesday and amend the charge to manslaughter?  Was it that the State, in light of the several instances, relatively recently, of persons on murder charges being freed in the Courts because the evidence, including signed statements, could not stand up to scrutiny by the Courts, had been reluctant to proceed with the original indictment? Or was this a case of not wanting to go to trial for quite another reason? Admittedly, there have been cases over the years in which persons charged with murder have been freed on the direction of the Judges hearing the matters, because main witnesses had been killed. But, clearly, this could not have applied to this case as the evidence against Parris had been given by Parris himself, and as he had assured with his signature before a Justice of the Peace, and “of my own free will.”

There had been eye witnesses to the incident, but were they questioned? We wish to make it clear that we are not saying that Parris would have been found guilty of murder at the end of the trial. We are nonetheless puzzled by the reluctance of the State to rely on Parris’ signed confession, which by his own admission had been freely given, that he had killed Dr Naraynsingh for money. Interestingly, two Fridays ago as the jury was being empanelled prior to the start of the trial of Parris on a charge of murder he had defiantly shouted out in open Court that he had an agreement with the Director of Public Prosecutions for him to plead guilty on the lesser charge of manslaughter. This case raises many questions that should worry us very much. Was there a cover-up? Was the police investigation so poor that the DPP had no other choice but to take the level of the charge to a lower grade. We admit to a very uncomfortable feeling about this whole affair.