Derek Achong

One of two men con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing agri­cul­tur­al con­sul­tant John Crop­per and two of his rel­a­tives dur­ing a home in­va­sion over two decades ago, has sued the State over be­ing forced to re­main on Death Row for over 10 years. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Daniel Agard filed his con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on Mon­day. 

Crop­per, his moth­er-in-law Mag­gie Lee, 68, and sis­ter-in-law Lynette Lith­gow-Pear­son, 57, were killed at Crop­per’s Mt Anne Dri­ve, Sec­ond Av­enue, Cas­cade home be­tween De­cem­ber 11 and 12, 2001.

Their bod­ies were found by Crop­per’s house­keep­er the fol­low­ing day. They were all bound and gagged with elec­tri­cal wire and their throats had been slit. Lith­gow-Pear­son, a for­mer tele­vi­sion broad­cast­er with the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC), and her moth­er were found in the same room, while Crop­per was found in the bath­tub. Mag­gie Lee was Agard’s great-grand­moth­er. 

Crop­per’s wife An­gela, a for­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor and deputy di­rec­tor of the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­gramme, was not at home at the time of the mur­ders. In No­vem­ber 2012, she died in Lon­don, Eng­land, af­ter a pro­tract­ed ill­ness. 

In 2004, Agard and Lester Pittman were con­vict­ed of the three mur­ders. 

The Court of Ap­peal even­tu­al­ly quashed Agard’s con­vic­tion and or­dered a re­tri­al but up­held Pittman’s con­vic­tion. 

Pittman then ap­pealed to the Privy Coun­cil, with the British Law Lords re­mit­ting the case to the Ap­peal Court for them to con­sid­er whether his con­vic­tion was safe, con­sid­er­ing new ev­i­dence over his men­tal state. 

The Ap­peal Court even­tu­al­ly up­held Pittman’s con­vic­tion but sen­tenced him to life im­pris­on­ment with a min­i­mum sen­tence of 40 years based on the fact that the five-year pe­ri­od for ex­e­cut­ing the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der, pre­scribed in the fa­mous case of Pratt and Mor­gan, had elapsed. 

Agard faced a re­tri­al in 2013 and was con­vict­ed. His con­vic­tion was even­tu­al­ly up­held by the Court of Ap­peal, with Agard opt­ing not to mount a fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the Privy Coun­cil. 

In the law­suit, Agard’s lawyers are claim­ing that al­though he was re­moved from the con­demned cells at the Port-of-Spain State Prison af­ter he ap­pealed his first con­vic­tion, he re­mained there af­ter be­ing re­turned fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion on re­tri­al. 

“The State lost the right to seek to car­ry out the law­ful sen­tence im­posed at the crim­i­nal tri­al of the Claimant up­on the ex­pi­ra­tion of the pre­sump­tive pe­ri­od in Pratt,” they said. 

“A State that wish­es to re­tain cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment must ac­cept the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of en­sur­ing that ex­e­cu­tion fol­lows as swift­ly as prac­ti­ca­ble af­ter sen­tence, al­low­ing a rea­son­able time for ap­peal and con­sid­er­a­tion of re­prieve,” they said, as they not­ed that he was not re­spon­si­ble for de­lays in his ap­peal. 

They claimed that while Agard ef­fec­tive­ly ben­e­fit­ed from the Pratt and Mor­gan prece­dent, he was not of­fi­cial­ly re-sen­tenced af­ter five years had elapsed since his con­vic­tion in 2013, as was done with Pittman. 

“As a State which takes its in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions se­ri­ous­ly and the fun­da­men­tal rights of our cit­i­zens equal­ly se­ri­ous­ly, it is in­cum­bent on this court, when called up­on, to com­mute a sen­tence to im­pose a sen­tence that is in ac­cor­dance with the com­mon law prin­ci­ples or aims of pun­ish­ment,” they said, as they claimed that his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were in­fringed.  

Through the law­suit, Agard is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the han­dling of his case. He is al­so seek­ing an in­junc­tion or­der­ing his re­lease from Death Row un­til he is even­tu­al­ly re-sen­tenced. He is al­so seek­ing an or­der quash­ing the death sen­tence still as­cribed to him. 

Agard is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ger­ald Ramdeen, Wayne Sturge, Alex­ia Romero and Dayadai Har­ri­paul. 

The case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing be­fore High Court Judge Joan Charles to­day, when she is ex­pect­ed to con­sid­er the in­ter­im re­lief be­ing sought by Agard.