Senior Reporter
derek.achong@guardian.co.tt
After spending over three decades in prison for murdering a taxi driver in a robbery, a model prisoner now wants to assist in helping rehabilitate other inmates serving long prison sentences for violent crimes.
Andrew Paul Douglas expressed the hope as he and Dexter “Panks” Lendore were set free after being re-sentenced by High Court Judge George Busby at the Hall of Justice in Port-of-Spain, yesterday morning.
Douglas said he planned to approach the government officials to offer his assistance.
“Right now the prisons are overfilled and I still think we can come together and do more to help reform those in the prisons with more programmes. I believe more can be done and I would like to assist in that aspect of it,” Douglas said.
Douglas, who was described by prison officials as a “star convict” in reports provided to assist in his re-sentencing, said that prison programmes were essential to his rehabilitation.
“Prison is a place where I sought to reform myself. The prison put programmes in place and I utilised all the programmes to help me to develop myself, especially the life skills programmes and the spiritual programmes,” Douglas said.
Douglas admitted that his son being murdered while he was serving his sentence also contributed to his self-improvement.
“I am also not just an ex-offender but a victim so I understand what victims feel out there and I guess that is what assisted in my transformation,” he said.
Douglas sought to apologise to his victim as well as other victims of violent crime as he called on citizens to show faith in the ability of prisoners to reform.
“I also want to speak on behalf of some of the guys in the system because I know there are some of them who are really sorry for what they did,” Douglas said.
In late 1993, Douglas, Lendore, and a third man, Keith Ling, were convicted of murdering Lall Sookdeo on September 10, 1989.
Sookdeo was plying his car for hire in Curepe when the three men boarded his vehicle and asked to be dropped in Chaguanas.
While en route, the men asked Sookdeo to divert to McInroy Street in Curepe.
One of the men, who was seated in the back seat, held Sookdeo in a headlock.
Sookdeo managed to break free from his grip and got out of the car.
One of the men shot Sookdeo in his head before they all abandoned the vehicle and ran away with the $75 they took from it.
In 1998, the Court of Appeal rejected their appeal over their convictions.
Their death sentences were eventually commuted to life imprisonment based on the landmark Privy Council case of Pratt and Morgan, in which the British Law Lords ruled that the mandatory death penalty for murder can only be lawfully executed within five years of conviction.
Douglas and Lendore were re-sentenced based on a more recent landmark ruling in which the Privy Council ruled that convicted murderers, who benefited from commuted sentences, should be given definite prison terms based on the unique circumstances of their cases instead of blanket sentences for the remainder of their lives.
Ling is scheduled to be re-sentenced at a later date.
