Neesa Gopaul’s murder: CCJ frees stepfather, upholds mother’s conviction but reduces jail time

…evidence by mother’s cellmate “gravely prejudiced” Jarvis Small
By Feona Morrison

The more than a decade-old murder of 16-year-old Neesa Lalita Gopaul was settled on Friday with Guyana’s highest court—the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ)—overturning the conviction and 45-year prison sentence of the teenager’s stepfather, Jarvis Small.

The father of three is now a free man owing to the CCJ’s finding that he was “gravely prejudiced” at his trial back in 2015 before Demerara High Court Judge Navindra Singh.
As for the girl’s mother, Bibi Shareema-Gopaul, 50, who had been jointly tried along with her 44-year-old lover, Small, while her conviction was affirmed, the regional court reduced her jail sentence from 45 to 25 years, ordering that she be considered for parole “not before 15 years”.

In affirming her conviction, the CCJ ruled that based on the evidence presented by the prosecution, it was proven beyond reasonable doubt that she killed her child.

Decomposed, stuffed in suitcase
On October 2, 2010, the badly decomposed body with the head bashed in of the younger Gopaul 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. The straight A Queen’s College student was found weeks after she was reported missing from her Leonora, West Coast Demerara (WCD) home.
Her cause of death was given as multiple blunt force trauma to the head.
Shareema-Gopaul and Small were initially sentenced to 106- and 96-years’ imprisonment, respectively, after they were found unanimously guilty of the teen’s killing following a trial before Justice Navindra Singh at the Demerara High Court in March 2015. The pair shortly after lodged separate appeals against their convictions and sentences at the Court of Appeal of Guyana, which in August 2021, affirmed their convictions but reduced their prison term to 45 years each.
Dissatisfied with that decision, they challenged the local appellate court’s ruling at the CCJ, asking it to determine (i) whether their convictions were unsafe and (ii) whether the Court of Appeal of Guyana’s variation of their sentence to 45 years was manifestly excessive.

Small, through his lawyers, primarily argued that due to the prejudicial nature of the evidence, Justice Singh erred when he refused his application, without giving reasons, for the joint indictment to be severed, allowing for him and Shareema-Gopaul to have separate trials.
The prejudicial evidence had to do with the prosecution’s main witness, Simone De Nobrega, who was also a cellmate of Shareema-Gopaul. De Nobrega had testified that the murder convict told her that it was Small who had killed her daughter by bashing her head with a piece of wood.
In relation to Small, there were three matters of evidence: reports that he had sexually assaulted the young girl, a pair of dumb-bells belonging to him that were found with the suitcase in which Neesa’s body was found, and his statement that he did not murder her but he knew who did.
Before the CCJ, the prosecution had contended that because the dumbbells found at the crime scene belonged to Small, this implicated him in the gruesome murder.

Plot to kill Neesa
As it relates to Shareema-Gopaul, the CCJ said that the testimony of De Nobrega, who was at the time awaiting trial for offences related to obtaining credit by false pretense, was that she met Shareema-Gopaul in the lock-ups where the latter confessed her and Small’s role in Neesa’s murder. De Nobrega testified that Shareema-Gopaul told her that she and Small had an extra-marital affair and that Small eventually encouraged her to kill her husband, Javed Gopaul, and she did by poisoning him. She further testified that Neesa subsequently found out about her father’s poisoning, made a report to the Police, and later talked about pursuing that report.

As a result, Shareema-Gopaul and her lover made plans to kill her daughter. On the day of the murder, Shareema-Gopaul was driving her two daughters and Small in a car along the Linden-Soesdyke Highway. While the younger daughter was asleep, Small began strangling Neesa in the car. Her mother then stopped the car on a trail where Small took Neesa out of the car and bludgeoned her on the head with a piece of wood before placing her body in the car’s trunk.
They then left the scene of the crime, leaving Neesa’s lifeless body overnight in the vehicle.
Shareema-Gopaul told her cellmate that on the advice of Small, she took personal items that belonged to her daughter from her home, such as her bank book, passport, and religious robe to make it appear as though the teen had run away. She also told her cellmate that she took a pair of dumb-bells that Small had given her and a length of rope to attach the weights to the suitcase in which they had planned to place her daughter’s body to keep it submerged.
The lovers returned to the scene the next day and stuffed the girl’s body in the suitcase with the personal items before submerging it in a creek by weighing it down with dumbbells and rope.

Gravely prejudiced
In delivering its majority judgement, the CCJ strongly stated that De Nobrega’s evidence should not have been placed before a jury trying the case against Small, and that it was a question for the jury whether they believed she was truthful in telling them what Shareema-Gopaul told her, and also how much of her story they believed. The regional court rejected the prosecution’s argument that the sexual assault allegations provided a motive for Neesa’s killing as it was “pure speculation” that Small had the motive to kill her to avoid being prosecuted for sexual assault.
Concerning the dumb-bells found at the crime scene, the CCJ found that there was no evidence that Small had retained possession of the articles to have placed them with the teenager’s body.
In addition, the CCJ further found that “it was impossible” to conclude that because Small said he knew about the girl’s killing that “he was the killer”.
“As these were the only matters of evidence against Small, the court was satisfied that the trial Judge [Justice Singh] should have upheld the submission that there was no case for Small to answer and directed his acquittal. The paucity of evidence against Small would have been apparent at the beginning of the trial when the application was made by Small for a separate trial and when it was clear that evidence of a confession that [Shareema-Gopaul] had made to a cellmate was inadmissible against Small and would be highly prejudicial to him,” the CCJ held.
“This made it an exceptional case where the trial Judge ought to have directed that there would be separate trials,” the CCJ said adding “Small was gravely prejudiced by the joint trial because he was convicted on the strength of evidence which was completely inadmissible against him.”
Given Neesa’s items that were found with her body, the CCJ rejected her mother’s argument that there was no material evidence connecting her to her daughter’s killing. The court held, “a jury could reasonably find [they] came from [Shareema-Gopaul’s] home and were provided by her.”
It also decided that Justice Singh delivered an adequate warning, and the jury would have gotten the sense he was telling them to be careful in deciding whether to believe De Nobrega.

Manifestly excessive
In addressing the sentence handed down by the trial court, the CCJ held that the 106-year sentence imposed on Shareema-Gopaul, with a starting point of 60 years, exceeded the life expectancy of a human being and was grossly disproportionate and manifestly excessive.
It pointed out that how the trial court went about sentencing was contrary to the constitutional guarantee of a fair hearing by an independent and impartial court as the disproportionate and excessive penalty imposed was tantamount to inhuman and degrading punishment.
Her resentencing by the Court of Appeal of Guyana was also reviewed.
The regional court was keen to note that the local appellate court did not discount pretrial custody in accordance with its guidance in Da Costa Hall v R.
According to the CCJ, the sentence itself of 45 years, though not as grossly disproportionate as the trial judge’s sentence, was still manifestly excessive, and the Court of Appeal did not indicate the period of ineligibility for parole consistent with certain legislative intent.
In the case at bar, the regional court noted that there were unique aggravating factors, in that it was the murder of a child by her parent which was associated with the vulnerability of a minor, the betrayal of trust and responsibility by a parent, and the degree of violence used to commit the offence including the wanton disregard for the personhood of the minor.

Re-sentencing
In re-sentencing Shareema-Gopaul, it found there were good reasons to increase the upper limit of the starting range to 22 years and to select a starting point at the upper end of the new range.
The Court then identified these considerations which would justify a stage two uplift relative to the commission of this offence: (i) there was a special relationship of trust and responsibility; (ii) the degree of blunt force to the head; (iii) the method of disposal of the body; and (iv) the lack of any remorse by the mother, and any evidence of motivation to murder her child.
It also considered that it had appeared from the record that Shareema-Gopaul had no prior convictions, and she was at the time of sentencing undergoing rehabilitation.
The CCJ termed these as “potentially mitigating circumstances”, adding that it also considered a special circumstance, the public interest in the welfare and protection of minors.
Having regard to all these factors, it held that uplift of between five to eight years was justified and found that a fair and just sentence of imprisonment is 30 years with parole eligibility not before 15 years would meet the penological objectives of sentencing. After the court deducted five years for the time the mother spent in pretrial custody, her final sentence stood at 25 years.
Deliberating on the matter were CCJ President Justice Adrian Saunders and CCJ Judges Maureen Rajnauth-Lee, Jacob Wit, Denys Barrow, and Peter Jamadar.
Attorneys-at-Law Ronald Daniels, Nigel Hughes, and Narissa Leander represented Small while Shareema-Gopaul was represented by Attorney-at-Law Arudranauth Gossai. Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Senior Counsel Shalimar Ali-Hack appeared on behalf of the State.
The girl’s murder had sent shockwaves throughout the country.