Judge removes convicted killer from death row

ANY attempt to carry out the death sentence imposed on convicted killer Daniel Agard will be unconstitutional, a High Court judge has ordered.

Justice Joan Charles made the order last week. She also declared that his continued detention on death row constituted a breach of his constitutional rights while vacating the death sentence imposed on him on September 13, 2013.

As part of her orders, Charles further directed that the State make steps to remove him from death row immediately and take him to an appropriate place while he waits to be resentenced by a judge in the Criminal Assizes.

In March, Agard filed a constitutional motion seeking to have his death sentence vacated and his removal from death row. He also asked to be resentenced in keeping with legal precedent on death-row inmates who have spent more than five years awaiting execution.

He applied for interim declarations.

Agard, 39, was twice convicted of the brutal murders of the Cropper family in 2001.

He first went to trial in 2004, when he and another man, Lester Pitman, were convicted and sentenced to hang for the triple murders of Maggie Lee, Lynette Lithgow-Pearson and John Cropper on December 11, 2001.

Agard was the great-nephew of John and the late independent senator Angela Cropper, while Lee was his great-grandmother and Pearson his great-aunt.

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

He did not appeal further to the Privy Council and his application said he has remained on death row since September 2013, a period of nine years, five months and 17 days. In all, he has spent 21 years in prison from the time of his arrest and charge in 2001, and ten years and two months on death row for his two sets of convictions.

His lawsuit contends that as a beneficiary of the Pratt and Morgan precedent, he should have been re-sentenced after five years. It said he had remained on death row since September 2013, a period of nine years, five months and 17 days. In all, he has spent 21 years in prison from the time of his arrest and charge in 2001, and ten years and two months on death row for his two sets of convictions.

The lawsuit said where there has been a long delay in carrying out a death sentence, which renders it unlawful, then it must be “judicially commuted,” and the High Court had the power to impose a substitute sentence in keeping with the principles of sentencing.

“The fundamental reason why execution following the lapse of a prolonged period of time 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.”

Agard is represented by attorneys Gerald Ramdeen, Wayne Sturge, Alexia Romero and Dayadai Harripaul.