Convicted killer Natasha de Leon resentenced: 2 more years before freedom

CONVICTED killer Natasha de Leon has been resentenced and can expect to be released from prison in two years and a month.

On January 31, de Leon, 50, was resentenced by Justice Hayden St Clair-Douglas after her conviction was commuted, in keeping with previous rulings from the Privy Council and the Court of Appeal.

De Leon and her common-law husband Darrin Thomas were tried and convicted on November 9, 1995, for the brutal murder of Princes Town taxi driver Chandranath Maharaj in 1993.

The couple, who were sentenced to death, had their convictions commuted to life in prison in 2008.

The couple left their Princes Town home and decided to rob somebody because they wanted money. De Leon was a flagwoman with a steelband and planned to go to the Panorama competition in Port of Spain the next day.

They travelled to San Fernando and chose to rob Maharaj.

Maharaj’s throat was slit. He was also stabbed several times and dropped into the sea close to the wharf in San Fernando. His car was abandoned.

De Leon was 18 and pregnant at the time.

St Clair-Douglas began with a sentence of 35 years and applied deductions for her rehabilitative efforts in prison, her participation in several courses there and other academic qualifications.

She was also considered a low-risk prisoner, earning her discount on her sentence.

The judge imposed a 33-year sentence, which, he said, was her substituted sentence. The sentence was ordered to run from the date of her conviction.

Having already spent 28 years and three months in prison, she was left with two years and a month left to serve, which she will do at hard labour.

However, the judge noted that while their objective was to rob Maharaj, she and Thomas “waylaid him” and even when he escaped, were consistent in their efforts to recapture him.

Apart from the conviction for Maharaj’s murder, which took place on February 6, 1993, de Leon was also convicted of another murder, which allegedly took place a month after the first, on March 10, 1993, when she was also arrested.

For the second murder, of another taxi driver, Lambert Dookoo, she was sentenced by then Justice Paula-Mae Weekes on February 5, 2001, and sentenced on March 1, 2001, to life imprisonment, not to be released before 20 years.

St Clair-Douglas refused to entertain de Leon’s application to review the sentence of manslaughter for Dookoo's death.

He said that the review was for the Mercy Committee, not a judge.

In that killing, De Leon and her brother Andre de Leon were convicted of manslaughter. Thomas was acquitted.

She had also been charged with the murder of Ruben Paul Jaskaran, which took place on December 28, 1992. The prosecution of that matter was stayed by then-acting judge Ian Stuart Brook on March 3, 2006, because of a 13-year delay. His ruling came after the Privy Council reinstated the death penalty as the only punishment for murder.

In his ruling, Brook said, “I hold that the State seeking to prosecute these applicants, for a capital offence, after a delay of 13 years two months, post the decision in Charles Matthew, when the death sentence, on conviction, is, once again, mandatory, is oppressive and unconscionable, without proof of actual prejudice, when if convicted, within a reasonable time, and before July 7, 2004, they would have been entitled to a commutation, to life imprisonment, of any death sentence imposed upon them.”

In a newspaper article in 2016, the couple’s daughter said her dream was for her parents to be released from prison. She was raised by her grandparents and regularly visited her parents in prison.

De Leon was represented by attorney Peter Carter. Rhea Libert appeared for the State.

Resentencing ordered

In March 2023, the High Court ordered that 23 convicted killers whose sentences had been commuted to life could be resentenced by the court.

A committee of two judges – Justice Ricky Rahim (civil division) and Justice Geoffrey Henderson (criminal division) – made these orders after the Privy Council ruling on commuted life sentences for murder convicts in the case of Naresh Boodram.

In this case, the law lords were asked to determine whether a court can substitute a sentence other than life when the death sentence is commuted.

Although the death penalty remains on the lawbooks in Trinidad and Tobago, rulings by the Privy Council over the last two decades have made it increasingly difficult for it to be carried out.

The last person to be hanged by the state in Trinidad and Tobago was Anthony Briggs, on July 28, 1999. He was preceded by convicted murderer Dole Chadee and eight of his gang members, in batches of three, on June 4, 5 and 7 in that same year. Several of the 23 have already had their sentences reviewed by judges in the Assizes.

The 23 convicted killers to be resentenced:

• Mervyn Parris
• Mervyn Edmund
• Kenrick London
• Denny Baptiste
• Parbatee Dass
• Haniff Hillaire
• Neil Hernandez
• Peter Benjamin
• Anthony Allan Garcia
• Robert Taylor
• Foster Serrette
• Natasha de Leon
• Samuel Winchester
• Rodney Davis
• Alfred Frederick
• Steve Mungroo
• Darrin Roger Thomas
• Gangadeen Tahaloo
• Amir Bowlah
• Phillip Chotolal
• Wilson Prince
• Bruce Herrera
• Amir Mohammed