TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO. PITMAN RECEIVES STAY OF EXECUTION

the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago granted convicted murderer Lester Pitman a stay of execution following the production of a notice of appeal filed by his lawyers on April 22 which the State said it had never received.
Maintaining his stand on the death penalty, however, Attorney General John Jeremie issued a statement to the media after Pitman won the stay of execution.
"This of course shall not deter the State from pursuing the execution of its constitutionally determined mandate in the very near future, in respect of the other condemned prisoners," the AG's office stated.
Even before Justice Rajendra Narine granted the stay, Gilbert Peterson SC, who represented the AG and Commissioner of Prisons in a motion filed by Pitman, said the State's decision to stand down the execution, which had been planned for June 13, was only temporary.
He told the judge that the State would agree to a stay that lasted only until after Pitman's appeal against his conviction was determined by the Privy Council.
Pitman, 25, of Mitagual, San Juan, had been convicted of the 2001 murders of UK-born agricultural consultant and philanthropist John Cropper, his mother-in-law Maggie Lee, 83, and sister-in-law Lynette Lithgow Pearson, 51, a former British Broadcasting Corporation anchorwoman.