Convicted killer Darren Thomas has 18 months left to serve in prison

Convicted killer Darren Thomas has a year and six months left to serve on his sentence for the brutal murder of Princes Town taxi driver Chandranath Maharaj in 1993.

Justice Hayden St Clair-Douglas resentenced Thomas on February 26.

Thomas and his then common-law wife Natasha de Leon were tried and convicted in 1995 for Maharaj’s murder which took place on February 6, 1993.

The couple, who were sentenced to death, had their convictions commuted to life in prison in 2008. In March 2023, the High Court ordered that 23 convicted killers whose sentences had been commuted to life could be resentenced by the court. Those orders were in keeping with the Privy Council ruling on commuted life sentences for murder convicts in the case of Naresh Boodram.

De Leon was resentenced on January 31, also by St Clair-Douglas. She had two years and a month left on her sentence. She has since appealed his decision to decline to review her life sentence and has asked the Appeal Court to review it and order her release forthwith.

At Thomas’s resentencing hearing, St Clair-Douglas considered the brutality of the crime. However, he noted Thomas had made positive strides while in prison by engaging in several courses. He also noted Thomas only had one documented infraction of prison rules against him. According to the judge, Thomas appeared to have “matured immensely” and “learned restraint.”

St Clair-Douglas began with a sentence of 35 years, from which Thomas received an 18-month reduction and was credited for the almost 32 years he has already spent in prison, leaving him with a year and six months left to serve.

According to the evidence, Thomas and De Leon 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.

In 1998, Amnesty International urged the then government not to hang Thomas.

A statement on June 26, 1998 said Thomas was scheduled to be hanged in four days.

“If the government proceeds with the hanging of Darren Roger Thomas on Tuesday – in order to fulfill the promise of the Attorney General to carry out an execution by the end of June – then it will be irrevocably violating his rights both under national and international law,” Amnesty International said at the time.

“We express our sympathy to the family of Chandranath Maharaj, whose death Darren Roger Thomas was convicted of participating in on February 6, 1993, as well as to the families of all people who have been murdered in Trinidad and Tobago,” Amnesty International said. “However, killing a person to show that murdering a person is wrong offers no solution to the problems of violent crime.”

Thomas was represented by Chimere Gibson-Wadi of the Public Defenders Department while Tricia Samuel represented the State.