One of two men convicted of the brutal murders of agricultural consultant John Cropper, his mother-in-law and sister-in-law has lost his appeal over his convictions.
Delivering a 67-page judgment at the Hall of Justice in Port-of-Spain, yesterday, Appellate Judges Alice Yorke-Soo Hon, Nolan Bereaux and Mark Mohammed dismissed all four grounds raised by Daniel Agard in his appeal.
As part of the decision, the judges upheld the three death sentences he received when he was convicted during a retrial in 2013.
However, the sentences will never be carried as Agard will benefit from the Privy Council’s ruling in the Jamaican case of Pratt and Morgan, which precludes the death penalty being executed after five years have elapsed since a conviction.
In his appeal, Agard, 35, formerly of Upper Bushe Street, Maitagual, San Juan, was claiming that his trial judge Prakash Moosai, who has since been elevated to the Court of Appeal, made errors when summed up the legal issues in his case to the jury.
Yorke-Soo Hon, who wrote the judgment, dismissed his claims over Moosai’s direction on joint enterprise.
“In this case, the trial judge, in his summation carefully explained to the jury the meaning of the concept of joint enterprise and directed them on the elements necessary for proving the culpability of a ‘secondary party’,” Yorke-Soo Hon said.
While she noted that the law in the area evolved since Agard was convicted, he would not benefit based on the unique circumstances of the case.
Yorke-Soo Hon also said that Moosai’s minor misdirection on Agard’s alleged alibi also did not affect the outcome.
“Although it was incumbent on the trial judge to give a full alibi direction, the jury would inevitably have arrived at the same verdicts had the direction been given. In the circumstances, the convictions are not unsafe,” she said.
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 after a protracted illness.
In 2004, Agard and Lester Pittman were convicted of the triple murder.
The Court of Appeal eventually quashed Agard’s conviction and ordered a retrial and 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.
Agard was represented by Jagdeo Singh, Renuka Rambhajan, Trevor Clarke and Criston J Williams, while Travers Sinanan and Mauricia Joseph represented the State.
