Wedding house murder: Convicted killer’s jailtime reduced from 70 to 22 years

Forty-one-year-old Rajesh Guyadeen, called “Bricksman”, who in 2018 had been sentenced to 70 years in prison for murdering 26-year-old Nandram Manohar, also called “Nando”, at a wedding house at Unity, Lancaster, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara (ECD)in 2003, has had his sentence reduced by the Court of Appeal (CoA) of Guyana.

Guyadeen had been found guilty in 2018 for the May 4, 2003 murder of Manohar, and the lengthy jail sentence had been imposed on him by Justice Navindra Singh in the Demerara High Court.
Through Attorney-at-Law Brandon De Santos, the convicted killer had mounted an appeal against his conviction, which he argued was unsafe; and his sentence, which he contended was severe.
In handing down its decision on Wednesday, the CoA, comprising Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag) Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards and Justices of Appeal Dawn Gregory-Barnes and Rishi Persaud, upheld Guyadeen’s conviction for the capital offence of murder, but found that the 70-year sentence imposed by trial Judge Navindra Singh was indeed severe. As such, the CoA has varied that sentence to 22 years, less time spent in pre-trial detention.
Guyadeen, who had fled Guyana after committing the crime, had initially been charged at some time in 2014, and had been remanded to prison.

Prejudicial evidence, misdirection
In his grounds of appeal, Guyadeen had, among other things, argued that Justice Singh had admitted prejudicial evidence, and this, coupled with the misdirection he had given to the jury, had rendered his conviction unsafe. As such, he had asked the appellate court to quash his conviction.
At the appeal hearing in April, Guyadeen’s lawyer had advanced that the trial Judge had allowed Prosecutrix Abigail Gibbs to tell the jury that his client had “run, run, run”.
According to counsel Brandon De Santos, in her closing address to the jury, the prosecutrix had said that Guyadeen had fled to neighbouring Suriname after committing the crime, and had been only arrested some 11 years after. De Santos had contended that whether this is true or not, it is of little importance in terms of proving the elements of murder.

According to him, the prosecutrix’s assertion is prejudicial because it “would invite the jury to draw the conclusion that the reason he [Guyadeen] was running was to get away from any liability he ought to have faced”.
“When you say he ‘run, run, run’, as a prosecutor, you may have fallen into an error of giving the jury a misconception that he ran away to escape”, said De Santos as he maintained that his client did not run away.
He said other inferences could have been drawn from his client’s absence from the jurisdiction. Where other inferences can be drawn from the evidence, De Santos had reasoned, as a matter of law, the inference most favourable to the accused person must be drawn.
He submitted that while this evidence was prejudicial, “it may have some probative value”. When one was to examine what the probative value was about him running away, it does little, if anything, to establish the ingredients necessary for a murder charge.
“It may have established the reason why it took so long for the charge to have been brought and for the trial to have commenced, but that is not relevant… In a murder trial, you need to have the ingredients for the murder charge led…and this running away aspect, in my respectful submission, did little, if anything, in terms of proving the elements of the charge of murder.”

Equal treatment
For her part, Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Teshana James-Lake, had dismissed De Santos’s contention that the trial Judge did not fairly/adequately put his client’s defence of alibi to the jury. She had recounted that when called upon to lead a defence, Guyadeen had opted to give sworn testimony, and had called witnesses to support his alibi that he was not in the country at the time of commission of the offence.
In putting Guyadeen’s defence to the jurors, the prosecutor recalled that the had Judge indicated to them that this was a defence of alibi. Apart from summarising Guyadeen’s defence of him being in Suriname at the time of the incident, the prosecutor had said that Justice Singh had also analysed the evidence of the two witnesses he called in support of his case.
Considering this, the Assistant DPP had insisted that Guyadeen’s defence was extensively put to the jury by the trial Judge. “Equal treatment was given to the prosecution’s case and the defence’s case,” she had argued.
According to her, the trial Judge was “very clear” in his general directions that it was the prosecution that had the burden to prove the elements of the offence.
“The jury would have been clear, because we had two cases that were completely opposite: the prosecution was saying that this is the appellant (Guyadeen) that caused the injuries…caused the death…and there we had the defence indicating that, no, we did not cause the injuries, the appellant was not there on the night.”
To this end, James-Lake had argued that taking the summing up as a whole, the trial Judge had dealt adequately with the treatment of the evidence, including the defence of Guyadeen; “so that the conviction in this matter ought to remain”.
Reports state that on the night of May 4, 2003, at Unity, Lancaster, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara (ECD), Guyadeen and Manohar were at a wedding house when someone alleged that Manohar had punctured Guyadeen’s bicycle wheel. Shortly after, Manohar was reportedly heard crying out that he had been stabbed.
The injured man was pronounced dead on arrival at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC). His cause of death was given as perforation of the aorta and kidney as a result of a stab wound measuring some 16 centimetres in length.
According to reports, Guyadeen, who had been the prime suspect in the man’s murder, had fled the country and had reportedly been hiding out in Suriname.
He reportedly returned to Guyana in December 2014, and was apprehended two months later when Police ranks raided a hotspot where they found him smoking marijuana. (G1)