The State v Ramesh Sieunarine O/C Blood

• Jurisdiction: Trinidad & Tobago
• Judge: Justice Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds
• Judgment Date: 17 December 2024
• Neutral Citation: TT 2024 HC 323
• Docket Number: CR-HC-SDO-2024-57-1
• Court: High Court (Trinidad and Tobago)

The State

and

Ramesh Sieunarine O/C Blood

For

Manslaughter (Provocation)

Before

the Honourable Justice Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds

CR-HC-SDO-2024-57-1

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

Criminal Division

Appearances:

Ms. C. Samuel and Ms. G. Guy for the State.

Ms. C. Gibson-Wadi and Ms. A. Ramjag for the Prisoner.

RULING ON SENTENCE

INTRODUCTION

1 By an Indictment filed on 1 June 2024, the Prisoner, Mr Ramesh Sieunarine o/c Blood was charged with the offence of murder. The particulars are that between 8 June 2020 and 11 June 2020, at Barrackpore in the County of Victoria in the South Magisterial District, the Prisoner murdered Tricia Allison Ramsaran Ramdass.

2 By a plea agreement filed on 4 December 2024, concluded between the Prosecutor and the Attorneys for the Prisoner, it was agreed that the Prisoner shall plead Not Guilty to Murder but Guilty to Manslaughter, on the basis of Provocation.

3 The terms of the agreement were restricted to an undertaking by the Prosecutor not to object to the Prisoner pleading guilty to the offence of manslaughter on the basis of provocation. There was no joint recommendation on sentence and therefore the entire sentencing exercise was left to my discretion.

4 On 5 December 2024, in accordance with the Criminal Procedure (Plea Discussion and Plea Agreement) Act, 20171, I conducted a Plea Agreement Hearing, with all parties to the proceedings present. After making the Section 24 enquiries of both the State and the Prisoner, I was wholly satisfied by the responses and determined that a plea to manslaughter on the basis of provocation was acceptable in the circumstances of this case. I therefore accepted the plea agreement and received it into the record. I arraigned the Prisoner and received his guilty plea to manslaughter.

Subsequently, the factual basis 2 for the plea was read and the Prisoner endorsed his acceptance. A Victim Impact Statement from the mother of the deceased was read. After the allocutus, I invited a plea in mitigation from Defence Counsel, who chose to file submissions on behalf of the Prisoner. I also considered the Probation Officer's Report. Between the filed submissions and the Probation Officer's Report, I have a comprehensive picture of the Prisoner's use of time while in prison custody

GENERAL SENTENCING PRINCIPLES

5 The authorities are well-settled as to the aims of sentencing and the methodology to be used by sentencing judges. The five principal objects of sentencing are set out in Benjamin v R3, and bear repeating:

• i. The retributive or denunciatory, which is the same as the punitive;

• ii. The deterrent vis-à-vis potential offenders;

• iii. The deterrent vis-à-vis the particular offender then being sentenced;

• iv. The preventative, which aims at preventing the particular offender from again offending by incarcerating him for a long period; and

• v. The rehabilitative, which contemplates the rehabilitation of the particular offender so that he might resume his place as a

  law-abiding member of society. 4

6 Of course, certain of these objects may loom larger than others 5, depending on the individual facts of each case.

7 I have also been guided by the four-tiered methodology which is expected to be applied by all sentencing judges, as set out by their Lordships in Aguillera, Ballai, Ballai and Ayow v The State6. The overall sentencing structure is set out as follows:

• i. The calculation of the starting point which takes into account the aggravating and mitigating factors of the offence only; these are the objective circumstances which relate to the gravity of the offence itself and which assist in gauging the seriousness, that is the degree of the harmfulness of the offence;

• ii. An upward or downward adjustment of the starting point (or dependent on the circumstances, and if there is in effect, a cancelling out, no adjustment at all), which takes into account the aggravating and mitigating factors relative to the offender; these are the subjective circumstances of the offender which in turn inform the degree of culpability of the particular offender;

• iii. (Where appropriate), a discount for a guilty plea; any deviation from the discount requires particularly careful justification and an explanation which is clearly expressed; and

• iv. Credit for the period of time spent in pre-trial custody.7

8 In Jude John Arjoon v The State8, the Court of Appeal included an additional final step to the Aguillera methodology, i.e., to incorporate ‘the totality principle’. In paragraph 117 of that decision, it was explained thus: “This final step will enjoin the sentencer, after the determination of the appropriate sentence(s) to be imposed, to “step back” and glean the intended sentence, whether individual or aggregate, consistent with the totality principle… The purpose of this final step is to ensure that the sentence(s) imposed is/are proportionate and not excessive.”

9 Regarding sentencing for manslaughter by provocation, I considered a number of precedents in appreciating parity and in setting an appropriate sentence.

10 I started with the oft-cited cases of Nadia Pooran v The State9 and Shelley-Ann Anganoo v The State10 and, in addition, I considered cases where the offence of manslaughter by reason of provocation involved domestic situations and gender based violence.

11 In Nadia Pooran v The State, our Court of Appeal provided a helpful guide as it relates to matters involving gratuitous violence. In that case, the deceased, a 41 year old retired school teacher, visited a bar in Curepe, where he spent some time in the company of the appellant and Shelly-Ann Anganoo. He then left the bar alone. Shortly after, the appellant and Anganoo also left the bar to join the deceased outside. Both women then entered the deceased's motor vehicle and were joined by two men. Pursuant to an agreement among the four to steal the deceased's car, the

deceased was first robbed of his money and then placed in the backseat of the car, while one of the two men drove it away from the area of the bar to a lonely trace in Barataria. There, the deceased's hands and feet were bound, and he was stabbed with a pair of scissors and struck with a wheel spanner. The deceased was stripped of his clothing and his body discarded in a nearby waterway. A post mortem examination conducted on the body of the deceased revealed that he died from skull, brain and other multiple injuries and haemorrhage due to multiple chop wounds to the head and body. The Court of Appeal, at paragraphs 36–39, outlined several cases and concluded that an appropriate starting point for this type of offence was within the range of 20 to 25 years

12 In Raffique Mohammed v The State11, the appellant had stabbed his wife repeatedly with a knife and was convicted of manslaughter by reason of provocation. She died as a result of injuries to her neck, and left upper chest. The attack took place at the deceased's apartment and horrifically, was witnessed by her two young sons, then only 8 and 9 years old respectively. From the appellant's evidence, he raised allegations of infidelity and provocative conduct by his wife over a period of time. The killing took place only a few months after the deceased had obtained a Protection Order against the appellant under the Domestic Violence Act 1999, which had prohibited him from assaulting or beating the deceased or causing her harm, and restraining him from entering the premises. The aggravating factors considered were that: the killing took place shortly after the deceased had sought and obtained a Protection Order in the Magistrates' Court to restrain the appellant from assaulting or beating her; the killing took place in the presence of the couple's two small children; and the seriousness and prevalence of the offence. The trial judge

considered that the appropriate sentence to be imposed was 30 years, from which he deducted the time spent in pre-trial custody, thus arriving at a sentence of 23 years hard labour to run from the date of conviction. This 23 year FINAL term was affirmed on appeal. At paragraph 10, the Court of Appeal noted:

“It must be borne in mind that an offender who is acquitted of murder by the jury, but found guilty of the lesser count of manslaughter by reason of provocation, has already had the benefit of a statutory reduction in sentence.”

At paragraphs 23–24, the Court of Appeal noted:

“It must be emphasised that each case must be considered on its own facts. However, the more recent cases indicate a sentence of 20 years or more for offences of this kind. In imposing sentence the trial judge gave careful consideration to the mitigating and aggravating factors, the objects of sentencing and sentences in recent cases.In the circumstances of this case he considered that the appropriate sentence to be imposed was 30 years, from which he deducted the time spent in pre-trial custody, thus arriving at a sentence of 23 years hard labour to run from the date of conviction.

Having regard to the particularly grave aggravating factors in this case, we are not persuaded that the trial judge's sentence was unduly severe.”

13 In Paul Cox v The State12, the appellant was sentenced to a final sentence of 25 years hard labour for the killing of a woman with whom he once shared a relationship. The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge failed to leave the issue of provocation and substituted the manslaughter conviction. In sentencing, the court noted the increased number of senseless and brutal killings. In the course of delivering the judgement, Hamel-Smith JA noted in 2008:

“the Court of Appeal is of the view that given the prevailing conditions in our country sentences for offences of this nature must now attract the upper end of the scale, of course recognizing that each case must be dealt with on its own merits”.

14 In Peter Cadette v The State13, after a...