Home for Christmas: Ex-murder accused, 32, begins living again

Days before Christmas, Ricardo Gittens, seeped in childhood memories, painted his bedroom a colour called Morning Sun. It felt perfect for a 32-year-old man who had spent half of his life in prison.

“Christmas and the new year mean everything to me,” said Gittens. “I feel happy and overwhelmed. I’m thankful for everything: life, family, friends – people who are in my life and who were always there for me.”

The soft-spoken, sometimes hesitant young man, who is one of my former students in the Youth Training Centre (YTC), spent the last 16 years and three months in prison waiting for the trial that he thought would exonerate him from a murder charge. That trial never happened.

Ricardo Gittens quit school in 2002 while in form two and moved in with a friend in Arima.

“I found school wasn’t cutting it. I needed money, clothes and shoes. I was doing a trade, welding, but that didn’t feel like my line of work. I operated a car wash in Arima.”

Every night , after work, Gittens said he drank, smoked and limed and then went his way. The teenager began hanging out with two men between the ages of 28 and 32. He had a reason for choosing them.

“I thought they had more brains than me. Unfortunately, they did not. They were ordinary guys – not in a gang; not into crime.”

At least that is what Gittens thought.

“One day, they came to me and told me someone had to die. I don’t know if they had a problem with him, but I was young, stupid, loyal and with the wrong set of people.”

Gittens said he went along for the ride with his two friends and doesn’t know exactly why.

“Things happened so fast. I was drinking the whole day and smoking. I knew what they were going to do. I could have said, ‘No, I’m not going,' but I didn’t. I didn’t look up to them. I looked up to me. I was into money. I had no reason to be there.”

Before the victim was chopped to death and burned at the scene of the crime in Blanchisseuse, Gittens said a voice inside of him kept telling him to "cut out. I still ask myself, ‘Why didn’t I leave?’”

The teen went to work the next day “as normal. I wasn’t worried. No one had seen us.”

Nine months later, in 2006, Gittens was arrested for that murder.

“It was about 5 am. About 14 police came into the house and plenty more were outside. My family was shocked and angry. The police took me to the police station and then called my mother because they knew I was a minor.”

Gittens was 16 years old at the time.

He said he believes the police had tracked down the first suspect because he had taken the victim’s phone.

“The first suspect was arrested, and he told the police everything. He told the truth. He said I was there along with another guy who wasn’t arrested. The first guy who spoke to the police died while in Maximum Security Prison (MSP). I don’t know how he died. The other guy, who actually committed the murder, was never arrested. He fled the country.”

After two days in the Arouca and La Horquetta police stations, Gittens got sent to YTC.

“I had to be sceptical. It was a different environment; different people. I came from the streets, and I know what the streets give. I thought a trial would take two to three years, but the system had something different planned.”

He felt the court would find him not guilty because of the statement given by the first accused before he died.

“The police had no evidence and no eyewitnesses, but they had that statement about who committed the murder.”

In YTC, Gittens took CSEC classes: maths, English, human and social biology – his two favourite subjects– and integrated science. He received four passes and participated in educational programmes, football and basketball.

He kept busy to keep his mind occupied.

“I kept myself out of trouble.”

Twelve years passed. In 2018, Gittens got transferred to MSP.

“I didn’t study it much. I was saying it didn’t make a difference. I was still in prison. The same way I went in YTC I will have to adapt. Everything is about survival, and I was just surviving.”

In 2019, Gittens finally got his day in court. He pleaded not guilty and his trial ended in a hung jury.

“I had to go through the whole system again,” said Gittens.

Early this year, Gittens went to court to get a second trial date.

“The State said it needed time to prepare the case for trial. I felt another long wait was involved so I pleaded guilty to end all of this waiting. My family needed help. Mom is sick. Time was wasting. I wanted to get it over and done. I needed to get out.”

The end of November, Gittens came home.

“When they lock you up, all your rights are taken away from you. Every 28 days you’re going to court to hear your case is postponed. Delays in the high court are often longer. No one wants to hear you talk in court. You just wait.”

If his family had better financial support, Gittens said he doesn’t believe he would have ever been in prison. His mother had tried to support her family of three on a meagre meat cutter’s salary.

The situation got worse when Gittens went to prison.

“Prisons is not the great fix for crime that people envision,” said Gittens. “The system needs to fix, starting with the people on top. They are wasting time with all of these delayed trials, but none of the politicians care about that. They are eating and working. They have it nice so they don’t care about the smaller man who is struggling.”

Gittens’ take on prisons is that “prison downgrades you to a point you just say, ‘That’s it,’ and plead guilty to end the endless wait. Prisons break some people. Some people ended up worse than when they started. It’s wrong to put minors in prison, and then transfer them to an adult prison because the system can’t find time to hear a case for over a decade. This is creating more problems.”

The biggest lesson Gittens said he has learned is that “life is up to the individual.”

His advice to young people is “Try something different other than the criminal lifestyle. Watch who you choose for friends because plenty of those people are involved in crime, and you might not even know that.”

Gittens plans to use skills he learned in prison to open a woodworking shop.

“I will start small and make beds, tables, chairs and have a parlour in the shop also. I want to move forward. I am trying to accumulate the money for equipment to make furniture.”

The teenager who left home, wandered aimlessly, took up with the wrong crowd and ended up in prison has chosen the perfect spot for his woodworking shop and parlour.

“They will be right here in my home so I never have to go far,” said Gittens.

He wishes he never would have left home so long ago.