Latest update December 21st, 2024 1:52 AM
Den Amstel wife killer sentence to death
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Dwayne Jordan, who axed his reputed wife, Claudeene Rampersaud, to death back in 2007, was yesterday sentenced to death. A moment of silence was observed after the presiding Judge, Justice Navindra Singh, announced that the accused would be hanged until dead.
Claudeene Rampersaud
Yesterday was reserved for Justice Navindra Singh’s ruling to be made at the Supreme Court. The accused was a week ago found guilty of murdering his wife and mother of his four children by a 12-member jury. On June 14, 2007 at Clay Brick Road, Den Amstel, West Coast Demerara, Jordan hacked his wife to death using a knife and a hatchet.
The reason? Rumours reportedly going around the village that the woman was having an affair. Rampersaud was a Special Constable attached to the Vreed-en Hoop Police Station at the time of her death. The prosecution, which was led by State prosecutor Konyo Thompson in association with Renita Singh, had proved their case that Jordan was indeed the perpetrator of the heinous crime.
Defence Attorney Nigel Hughes had asked that the accused be able to make a plea of mitigation given the recent 2010 amendment that the death penalty is no longer mandatory. He then referred to the recent case of Lennox Boyce in Barbados, where the Caribbean Court of Justice found that the death penalty was no longer constitutional.
In Justice Singh’s ruling he noted after scrutiny, that Section 100 of the Criminal offences Act 801 provides that the death penalty has a discretionary provision. Section 139 to 149 of the Constitution which takes in International human rights considerations, the Judge indicated, provides for the availability of the death penalty. The law thus meant that though the death penalty was not mandatory, it is at the discretion of the Judge.
Hughes’s mitigating factors was that his client was remorseful. He said that his client was 40-years-old with seven children; four of whom belonged to the now dead Rampersaud. The accused, he said, was a carpenter who provided for the entire family and there was not one single report of hostility ever reported by the accused.
Dwayne Jordan
Hughes said he wished to touch on the power of the emotion of jealousy which found fertile ground in suspicion of infidelity. He asked for mercy on behalf of his client and highlighted that the couple’s children are now without parents.
The prosecution however charged that, “the same mercy the accused showed the deceased, should be showed to him.” Thompson argued that the murder was no crime of passion and was in fact a premeditated act which was committed in an abandoned house.
The prosecution asked the court to consider the Post Mortem report of the deceased, highlighting that the woman was dealt 12 incised wounds mostly to the head severing the skull causing the brain to protrude.
She reminded the court that the accused was not remorseful and had returned to court with the same story with a little more added, after a hung jury in his last trial. Thompson went on to say that Jordan was found two days later in a clump of bushes parallel to the crime scene with serious injuries.
The Court was asked to consider the aggravating factors of the case; that the sister of the deceased had a minor child in her hand, while her husband was holding another small child when they ran up the steps of the abandoned house from which they heard the deceased crying for help.
Seeking at all cost to get to the house; Thompson said that the accused fired a chop at the sister which left a large cut from the forehead to the chin. The sister’s husband was also injured after a scuffle with the accused. It was during that scuffle, she said, that Jordan received his wound which left his intestines protruding.
When the accused was asked if he had anything to say he refused. The Court however related that it was bothered by the evidence that a rumour of the now dead woman being unfaithful could lead to the knife and hatchet being used.
He said he could not see any other intent since the couple was in an abandoned house, neither could he reconcile that the accused had fathered children with the deceased. The Court was asked to stand and the Judge delivered his ruling. (Zena Henry)
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