TRINIDAD-Man convicted of murdering former BBC broadcaster wants death sentence vacated.

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PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – A 39-year-old man who was convicted twice for the murder of a former British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television broadcaster and three members of the Cropper family has applied to the courts here to vacate his death sentence.

Daniel Agard also wants the court, which will begin hearing his constitutional motion on Wednesday, to have him removed from death row. He has also applied for an interim declaration that any attempt to carry out the death sentence imposed on him on September 13, 2013, and his continued detention on death row, will be in contravention of the Constitution.

Agard had first gone on trial in 2004 along with Lester Pitman and were both convicted and sentenced to hang for the murders of Maggie Lee, 83, Lynette Lithgow-Pearson, 51, and John Cropper, 59, that were committed in December 2001.

Pitman successfully challenged his case at appeal, and his death sentence was commuted. He was eventually ordered not to be released before serving at least 40 years in prison.

Lithgow-Pearson was a former British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television broadcaster. Cropper, Lee, and Lynette were killed at Cropper’s home at Cascade on the capital’s outskirts between December 11 and 12, 2001. Their bodies were found on December 13. They had been bound and gagged with electrical wire, and their throats had been slit.

The BBC had reported that Mrs. Pearson, who used Lynette Lithgow professionally and had been living in France, was in her native Trinidad working on a book project when she was killed. It said her mother, Mrs. Lee, who had been living in Toronto, had joined her there for a holiday.

Agard was the great-nephew of John and the late independent senator Angela Cropper. Lee was his great-grandmother, and Pearson his great-aunt. Cropper headed the Cropper Foundation, which sponsored workshops for young writers.

Agard’s lawyers are asking the court on Wednesday for his sentence to be vacated and for him to be removed immediately from the condemned section of the Port of Spain prison.

He successfully appealed his convictions, and a retrial was ordered. He was again convicted, and three death sentences were imposed on him on September 13, 2013, which he appealed and lost in July 2019.

In his new application, Agard said he has remained on death row since September 2013, a period of nine years, five months, and 17 days and that so far, he has spent 21 years in prison from the time of his arrest and charge in 2001, and 10 years and two months on death row for his two sets of convictions.

His application states he has not contributed to any delay and remains under the sentence of death, which cannot now be lawfully carried out in keeping with the principles set out in the Pratt and Morgan case. The London-based Privy Council has ruled that to carry out a death sentence after more than a five-year delay would be cruel punishment.

According to the application, in 2019, it should have been clear to the State that the death penalty could not be carried out because of Pratt and Morgan. It said the State took no steps to commute his sentence, so his continued detention in a condemned cell is unconstitutional.

“Prolonged and unjustifiable delay in the carrying out of an execution imposed by a court of competent jurisdiction could render the execution not being by the due process of law guaranteed…under the Constitution.

“…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,” according to the motion.

The claim set out an estimated timeline for capital punishment, suggesting 12 months to hear an appeal after conviction and six months for the Privy Council to dispose of it.

The claim suggested disposing of a domestic appeal in two years and for any complaints to international human rights bodies to be made 18 months later.

It also states that there has been a long delay in carrying out a death sentence, which renders it unlawful. It must be “judicially commuted,” and the High Court can impose a substitute sentence in keeping with the sentencing principles.

“The fundamental reason why execution following the lapse of a prolonged period after sentence of death would constitute inhuman punishment is that the condemned man has suffered the agony of mind of facing the prospect of execution over that period.”

In his affidavit, Agard said he had been incarcerated for more than half his life and had considered suicide many times. He spoke of the prison condition, allegedly being beaten during a prison riot, attacks by other inmates, and what he felt when the death sentences were read to him twice.

“It has haunted me from the time I heard those words to now,” he said, noting that he has also been one of the youngest prisoners on death row, where he has his cell.

“You may be physically alive, but you are emotionally dead. Each day on death row, the experiences that you are made to go through saps your very humanity,” he said, adding that as a death row inmate, he cannot participate in any prison programs or advance his education, as incarceration is only supposed to allow the condemned prisoner to prepare to “meet their maker.”

“The fear of being executed at the hands of the State is a genuine one,” he said.

The last execution in Trinidad and Tobago was carried out in 1999.

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