Convicted killer released on 3-year bond after sentence review

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A man from Mara­bel­la, ac­cused of stab­bing his moth­er’s teenage ten­ant to death when he was 14-years-old, has been re­leased af­ter spend­ing al­most two decades in prison.

Nicholas Ram­per­sad was re­leased on a three-year bond when his sen­tence came up for re­view be­fore Jus­tice De­van Ram­per­sad (no re­la­tion) last week.

Ram­per­sad was ac­cused of mur­der­ing 17-year-old moth­er of one Nav­isha Crys­tal Be­daysie on June 27, 2008.

Months be­fore Be­daysie’s death, she and her two-year-old daugh­ter moved in­to an apart­ment un­der Ram­per­sad’s home. She oc­ca­sion­al­ly left the ba­by with Ram­per­sad when she went out.

On the night of the in­ci­dent, a blood-soaked Be­daysie was seen run­ning out of the house be­fore col­laps­ing on the road.

Res­i­dents rushed to her as­sis­tance and she told them that some­one named Nicholas stabbed her.

As there were sev­er­al men in the com­mu­ni­ty with the same name, res­i­dents asked her to iden­ti­fy which one was the cul­prit.

She re­port­ed­ly nod­ded when Ram­per­sad’s moth­er Mau­reen was men­tioned. An au­top­sy re­vealed that she had been stabbed 15 times.

Al­though Ram­per­sad de­nied at­tack­ing Be­daysie, he was ar­rest­ed as blood was found on his cloth­ing.

When the po­lice ar­rest­ed him, Ram­per­sad sought to ex­plain the pres­ence of Be­daysie’s blood on him.

He claimed that he heard Be­daysie’s screams, rushed to her as­sis­tance and saw the al­leged per­pe­tra­tor jump­ing over the fence.

In late 2019, Ram­per­sad was con­vict­ed at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Gillian Lucky.

As he was a mi­nor when he al­leged­ly com­mit­ted the crime, he was spared the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der and was in­stead sen­tenced to 21 years in prison.

Af­ter de­duct­ing the time he spent on re­mand, Ram­per­sad was left with a sen­tence of nine years in prison with pe­ri­od­ic sen­tence re­views.

Jus­tice Lucky al­so or­dered that he was not el­i­gi­ble for re­lease un­til serv­ing four years and six months of the re­main­ing sen­tence.

Ram­per­sad’s sen­tence was re­viewed twice be­fore com­ing up for a third re­view be­fore the judge.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on Ram­per­sad’s be­half, his lawyers Michelle Ali and Kamei­ka Pe­ters claimed that he should be re­leased based on his suc­cess­ful at­tempts at re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion while serv­ing the min­i­mum prison term.

They not­ed that he par­tic­i­pat­ed in nu­mer­ous pro­grammes in­clud­ing learn­ing the trade of tai­lor­ing.

They re­ferred to re­ports which in­di­cat­ed that he had a low risk of re-of­fend­ing and was ready to rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety.

State pros­e­cu­tor Des­ti­nee Gray claimed that Ram­per­sad should serve the en­tire 21-year sen­tence be­fore be­ing el­i­gi­ble to be con­sid­ered for re­lease.

Ram­per­sad’s lawyers con­tend­ed that the sen­tence was not fixed as it was open to re­view, as they pre­sent­ed sev­er­al cas­es in which con­victs were placed on bonds be­fore com­plet­ing the en­tire du­ra­tion of their sen­tence.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad even­tu­al­ly agreed that he could serve the re­main­der of the sen­tence on the bond based on favourable re­ports pre­sent­ed by prison of­fi­cials.

Un­der the terms of the bond, he would be re­ar­rest­ed and re-sen­tenced if he com­mits a crim­i­nal of­fence over the next three years.

He was al­so di­rect­ed to be un­der the su­per­vi­sion of a pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer and the Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices De­part­ment for the du­ra­tion of the pe­ri­od.