TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO. STATE TO PAY WOMAN 'TOO LONG IN DEATH ROW'

following an Appeal Court ruling, it emerged that Trinidad and Tobago would have to compensate Angela Ramdeen, a woman who remained on death row for more than five years, because of the State's failure to inform her that she could no longer be executed.
In the court's ruling, Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma stated that Ramdeen was under no obligation to produce any evidence to show what effect she suffered while awaiting execution.
"To keep someone in that state over a prolonged period is to inflict upon him cruel and unusual punishment," the judgment stated.
Justice of Appeal Margot Warner and Allan Mendonca agreed with Sharma's findings in the 18-page ruling and ordered the State to bear the legal costs incurred by Ramdeen at the appeal.
On the issue of what sentence Ramdeen would ultimately face the Appeal Court remitted that matter to the High Court for a sentencing hearing.
 Ramdeen, 43, had been convicted in 1997 of killing her lover's two children, in 1993.
Having exhausted all her appeals against the death penalty and lost, Ramdeen filed a constitutional motion in June 2003 seeking a declaration from the High Court that her continued detention on death row awaiting execution after the expiration of five years constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Justice Peter Jamadar ruled in her favour in December 2003, vacating the death sentence and commuting her sentence to life imprisonment.
Sharma stated that Ramdeen was entitled to have her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment based on the principles outlined by the 1993 decision of the Privy Council in the Jamaican case of Pratt and Morgan.