CCJ ruled in 3 murder cases, 1 rape matter from Guyana in 2022

The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) had issued decisions in four criminal cases from Guyana in 2022, according to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). One of those cases was in relation to an application by US-based Guyanese Marcus Bisram, who was charged with murder. He had asked the apex court to quash the DPP’s directive to the Magistrate to have him committed to stand trial for the 2016 murder of Berbice carpenter Faiyaz Narinedatt.
The CCJ, in its ruling, declared that Section 72(2)(ii)(a) of the Criminal Law (Procedure) Act, which empowered the DPP to direct a Magistrate, was unconstitutional, as it violated Article 122A of the Constitution of Guyana, which mandates that all courts and all persons presiding over the courts shall exercise their function independently of the control and direction of any person or authority; and shall be free and independent from political, executive, and any other form of direction and control.

It consequently struck down this law, and quashed Bisram’s committal on finding that there was not sufficient evidence for him to face trial by a jury before a Judge.
The Government has since tabled a Bill to amend this law. Section 72(2)(ii)(a) of the Act will be amended in the manner recommended by the CCJ. With the amendment, the DPP, if aggrieved by the decision of a Magistrate to discharge an accused person at the end of a Preliminary Inquiry (PI), can now make an ex-parte application to a Judge of the High Court for a warrant to arrest and commit the discharged person to trial.
The judge may grant that application only if he/she is of the view, from the evidence that was placed before the Magistrate who discharged the accused person, that such a course of action is required. If either the DPP or discharged person is aggrieved by the Judge’s decision, an appeal against that decision shall lie with the Court of Appeal of Guyana.

The other three matters the CCJ pronounced on were appeals from the Court of Appeal of Guyana’s decisions in relation to the offences of rape and murder.
One was for the offence of rape and assault causing actual bodily harm. In this case, Calvin Ramcharran, who was convicted of raping and assaulting a 20-year-old woman in 2012, had asked the regional court to quash his conviction and sentence, alleging numerous errors in law.
He was initially sentenced to 23 years’ imprisonment on the rape charge and three years on the assault charge, with the trial Judge ordering that the sentences be served concurrently.

The appeal against the convictions was dismissed by the CCJ. The apex court, however, allowed his appeal against sentence only, reducing the 23-year prison time to 12 years, which he has to serve concurrently with the three years for assault.
The evidence disclosed that, on the night in question – July 23, 2012 – the woman had gone to a party at Soesdyke, East Bank Demerara (EBD) with some friends, and was making her way to the washroom when Ramcharran followed her and asked her if she was “doing business.”

When she replied, “No”, he grabbed her hands, and a fight ensued between them, during which Ramcharran hit her several times with a bottle to her head, and then dragged her to the back of the building, where he choked and punched her, and then had sex with her against her will.
After committing the heinous act, he offered the woman $65,000 and instructed her to meet him at a car on the road. However, the victim, whom the convict had stripped of her clothes, alerted her friends, who immediately carried her to the hospital.
The other two cases were for the offence of murder. In one of the cases, Bibi Shareema Gopaul, 50, along with her 44-year-old lover Jarvis Small, appealed against their conviction and sentence for the murder of her 16-year-old daughter, Neesa Gopaul. The former Queen’s College student’s body was found in a suitcase that was submerged by dumbbells in a creek along the Linden/Soesdyke Highway back in October 2010.

The trial Judge had sentenced Small to 96 years’ imprisonment, and Bibi Gopaul to 106 years. The Court of Appeal of Guyana later reduced their sentences to 45 years each. While the elder Gopaul’s conviction was upheld, her sentence was reduced by the CCJ from 45 years to 25 years’ imprisonment with no eligibility for parole before 15 years.
The CCJ allowed her lover’s appeal against conviction and sentence; he has been freed. In so doing, it decided, among other things, that he was “gravely prejudiced” at his trial back in 2015.

On October 2, 2010, the teenager’s badly decomposed body with the head bashed in was found stuffed in a suitcase in a creek at the Emerald Tower Resort at Madewini, Linden-Soesdyke Highway. Also discovered were her passport, bank card, and other personal items.
The suitcase was wrapped with rope and attached to dumb-bells in an apparent effort to keep her body submerged. She was found weeks after she had been reported missing from her Leonora, West Coast Demerara (WCD) home. Her death had been determined as due to multiple blunt force trauma to the head.
In the other murder case, the CCJ ruled that the appeals filed by two brothers be dismissed. Orwin and Cleon Hinds had appealed against their convictions for the murder of 71-year-old Clementine Fiedtkou-Parris, who was gunned down at her Lot 42 Robb Street, Georgetown residence on June 30, 2011.
The court has reserved its decision on the siblings’ appeal against their 50-year prison term, with no eligibility for parole before 45 years, that was imposed by the local appellate court.
The brothers were initially jailed for 81 years each by the trial Judge.
The charge the men had faced detailed that, on June 30, 2011, they murdered Fiedtkou-Parris pursuant to an arrangement wherein money was intended to be passed from one person to another. The elderly woman was shot and killed on the night of June 30, 2011.
It was reported that three men had gone to the woman’s home asking for “Auntie”, and when she emerged from her bedroom, one of them pulled out a gun and shot her several times in her upper body. The men then fled the scene in a waiting motor car while the elderly woman was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
It is believed that a bitter dispute over a property might have been the motive for her killing. (G1)