A Tacarigua man who was released from prison in December after serving more than 30 years for murder, has sued the State for its failure to conduct periodic sentence reviews that could have resulted in an earlier release.
In the lawsuit filed earlier this month, Beemal Ramnarace’s lawyers led by Senior Counsel Anand Ramlogan, of Freedom Law Chambers, contended that his constitutional rights to liberty and protection of the law were breached by the failure to conduct the four-year reviews as required under Prison Rule 282.
In April 1996, Ramnarace was convicted of murdering Ian Poon in 1993 and was given the mandatory death penalty. A little over a year later, the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction and ordered a retrial. The retrial ended with the same outcome as in his first trial.
Ramnarace’s sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment based on the landmark Jamaican case of Pratt and Morgan, in which the United Kingdom-based Privy Council ruled that the death penalty could only be carried out within five years of a prisoner receiving it.
Ramnarace, who spent most of his sentence at the Carrera Island Prison, was re-sentenced by High Court Justice Gillian Scotland late last year, based on another landmark case in which the Privy Council ruled that beneficiaries of commuted sentences should receive definitive prison terms as opposed to blank sentences for the remainder of their natural life.
Justice Scotland ordered the immediate release of Ramnarace, who had been in prison for a little over three decades, as she ruled that a 25-year sentence was appropriate based on the circumstances of Poon’s murder and Ramnarace’s positive rehabilitation.
In the lawsuit, Ramnarace’s lawyers argued that although he was entitled to six sentence reviews during his lengthy incarceration, he only received three between 2014 and 2022.
Noting that the three recent reviews were positive, with Ramnarace being described as an exemplary inmate, his attorneys said: “Had these reviews been conducted and properly considered, the claimant is confident that it would have had a favourable impact on his early release and, in the absence of same, he spent a relatively longer time in prison that he would otherwise had to spend.
“However, this benefit was inexcusably stripped away from him due to the Defendant’s delay and/or failure to carry out the reviews, thus violating the right to protection of the law. He was treated in an arbitrary and unfair manner in breach of his rights.”
Ramnarace’s lawyers also highlighted the lack of activity of the Mercy Committee. They noted that in 2014, the seven-member committee, which includes the National Security Minister, Attorney General and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), considered his case and decided against advising the President to use the presidential power of pardon under the Constitution.
Although the Commissioner of Prisons recommended his early release in 2017, his second application was not considered by the committee.
The case has been assigned to High Court Judge Frank Seepersad who set a case management hearing on June 3.