Cascade triple murderer seeks freedom

CONVICTED killer Daniel Agard is seeking his immediate release from prison.

On August 8, Justice Carol Gobin permitted him to seek judicial review of a decision by the prison authorities not to apply the prison rules relating to the remission of his sentence and to keep him incarcerated even after the High Court resentenced him  on July 30.

Agard is seeking several declarations and his immediate release.
The matter will come up for hearing on August 16, as it has been deemed fit for urgent hearing during the court’s long vacation.

On July 30, Agard was sentenced to 28 years for the brutal murders of members of the Cropper family in 2001.

Scotland deducted from his sentence the time he had spent  incarcerated since December 19, 2001 .

It was expected to be further reduced once the prison authorities calculated his remission.

However, he has complained this was not done.
His lawsuit contends that the prison authorities limited the prison rules on remission. He claimed  the warrants section of the Port of Spain prison told him after calculating the sentence imposed on him by the court, his earliest possible date of release was January 2028, with the further possible date of release being July 2052.

He claimed he was told his sentence was calculated to start from July 29, 2024, and after the time spent was subtracted, he would only receive remission for the remaining 22 months. His lawsuit said on August 2, he received a response from the prison to his pre-action letter on the calculation of his sentence and was told he still had time to serve.

However, his lawsuit contends the prison rules on remission were not properly applied and the proper calculation of his sentence would have ended on August 19, 2020.

“The prison authorities wrongfully calculated the term of imprisonment I was required to serve…,” he said in support of his lawsuit.

“I was found guilty and lawfully sentenced to suffer death by hanging. I was detained for longer than the law permitted awaiting execution…The State conceded that I suffered cruel and unusual punishment...

“I accept that the State is entitled to punish me for the crimes that I was found guilty of committing, However, the power of the State to deprive me of my liberty is limited by the lawful execution of the order of imprisonment that was imposed on me.”

Agard, 39, was twice convicted for the Cropper murders. He first went to trial in 2004, when he and another man, Lester Pitman, were convicted and sentenced to hang for the 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. Lee was his great-grandmother and Pearson his great-aunt.
Cropper, who was British, his mother-in-law Maggie Lee and his sister-in-law Lithgow-Pearson were killed at Cropper's home in Mt Anne Drive, Second Avenue, Cascade, 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 slit.

Lithgow-Pearson was a former television broadcaster with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

Cropper’s widow Angela, who was not at home at the time of the murders, died in London in November 2016. She was a former independent senator.

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

He did not appeal further to the Privy Council.

His co-accused, Pitman, successfully challenged his case at appeal and his death sentence was commuted. He was eventually ordered not to be released before he had served a minimum of 40 years in prison.

In 2023, Agard was removed from death row after he filed a constitutional motion. He had been there since September 2013 – a period of nine years, five months and 17 days.

Justice Joan Charles ordered that any attempt to carry out the death sentence would be unconstitutional. She vacated the death sentence and ordered him resentenced by a judge in the Criminal Assizes. Scotland did so on July 30.

On July 18, the High Court ordered Agard to receive $45,000 from the State as compensation for a cut on his face he received from another inmate while in prison. Justice Ricky Rahim said prison officers had breached their duty of care.

Agard was one of the scores of prisoners who benefited from a 2012 ruling on an alleged beating they received during a prison riot in 2006.

However, in 2023, the Court of Appeal overturned their wins and said their cases should not have been treated as a test-case agreement. They were expected to challenge the ruling in the Privy Council.

Agard is represented by attorneys Gerald Ramdeen, Wayne Sturge, Lemuel Murphy and Dayadai Harripaul.