Derek Achong

A 34-year-old con­vict­ed mur­der­er who es­caped the hang­man's noose through a land­mark Privy Coun­cil judg­ment in his favour was sen­tenced to 30 years yes­ter­day.How­ev­er, Nim­rod Miguel is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in 19 and a half years, as the time he has spent in prison af­ter be­ing charged with mur­der­ing a Rio Claro dri­ver in 2003 was de­duct­ed from his sen­tence.

In pass­ing the sen­tence, yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Althea Alex­is-Wind­sor, sit­ting in the Port-of-Spain Sixth Court at the Hall of Jus­tice, said she con­sid­ered a num­ber of ag­gra­vat­ing fac­tors in­clud­ing the preva­lence of mur­ders for fi­nan­cial gain and "the fact that this was a sense­less mur­der of an hon­est cit­i­zen of T&T."

The judge, re­fer­ring to a re­port from a pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer and one deal­ing with his so­cial back­ground, said, "They both note that Miguel's child­hood was a dif­fi­cult one in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic con­straints which caused him to leave school and be­gin work­ing at the age of 12."

She said she had al­so con­sid­ered whether Miguel ex­pressed re­morse for the in­ci­dent, but not­ed that he was on­ly re­morse­ful for keep­ing bad com­pa­ny–the three friends who took part in the crime–but did not ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for his part in the death of the vic­tim, Ramesh Lalchan. In 2008, Miguel was found guilty of mur­der­ing Lalchan on De­cem­ber 30, 2003. He gave a state­ment to po­lice say­ing he and a group of friends went to rob Lalchan of his ve­hi­cle, but he played no part in killing him.

He said he tied Lalchan's hands and feet but it was an­oth­er man who shot Lalchan in the head sev­er­al times.The body was lat­er found near Fair­field, Princes Town.Miguel ini­tial­ly ap­pealed his con­vic­tion and sen­tence, but the Ap­peal Court dis­missed his claim.While the Privy Coun­cil agreed that his tri­al and con­vic­tion were sound, they felt the manda­to­ry death sen­tence he re­ceived was cru­el and un­usu­al pun­ish­ment and ruled it was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Through their judg­ment, the British Law Lords gave judges the dis­cre­tion to by­pass the manda­to­ry death penal­ty in cas­es where some­one mur­ders an­oth­er in the com­mis­sion of a less­er crim­i­nal of­fence such as a rob­bery, as in Miguel's case. Miguel was rep­re­sent­ed by Daniel Khan while pros­e­cu­tor Brent Win­ter rep­re­sent­ed the State.