Mom to be re-sentenced for killing stepchildren

Ramdeen’s sentencing re-view was heard yesterday in the San Fernando High Court. Attorneys both for the State and Ramdeen submitted the factors Jones should consider to determine how many years in jail Ramdeen should spend for the two murders committed 13 years ago.

Ramdeen was convicted and sentenced to hang on January 14, 1997, for killing Sabrina Hemawatee Dass, seven, and eight-year-old Toolsie Varun Dass.

The children’s father and Ramdeen’s common-law husband, Vishnu Dass, yesterday wept openly outside the court after the hearing.

Ramdeen had picked up the two children from school around noon on October 25, 1993. The woman took them to her Perseverance Road home in Freeport, where she killed them in the bathroom.

Ramdeen then buried them at the back of her house in a manure heap. The children died from blunt force trauma to the head, an autopsy had revealed.

Ramdeen was the first prisoner to have her sentence commuted to life imprisonment following the Privy Counsel judgment of Pratt and Morgan.

That ruling declared that it was cruel and harsh punishment for murder accused persons to spend more than five years in jail awaiting trial.

Ramdeen, who had spent six years on Death Row, filed a constitutional motion in 2003. Justice Peter Jamadar had ruled then that the mandatory death sentence imposed on Ramdeen was unconstitutional. The judge ordered that Ramdeen be re-sentenced.

Yesterday, attorney Gillian Lucky, appearing for the State, submitted to Jones that Ramdeen should serve a prison term of at least 25 to 30 years. Lucky submitted to the judge that based on two psychiatric assessments, Ram-deen had not accepted responsibility for the children’s killing. Lucky said, "The problem remains that there has been little acceptance or acknowledgment.

"Despite years of assessment by several psychologists, no answer to the burning question — ‘Why was this done?’ There has been no motive."

Lucky asked Jones to consider the suffering that the children endured before death, reminding her that pathologist Dr Jankie said Sabrina Dass may have been buried alive.

Leading the submissions on behalf of Ramdeen was English Queen’s Counsel, Peter Carter. He asked the judge to consider the 20 to 25 years sentence, but also the nine years she had already served.

Jones said she needed time to consider the arguments and would give a written ruling on Ramdeen’s sentence.