St. John’s Antigua: The murderer who previously escaped a death sentence for strangling his girlfriend Monique Ramsey in 1994 was freed from prison yesterday after serving two-thirds of his 25-year sentence.
Former LIAT pilot Ronald Gederon – found guilty of murder in 1995 following a trial – is set to be deported to his homeland Trinidad & Tobago on the earliest flight possible.
Until then, he will remain in custody at St John’s Police Station.
The death sentence he was initially given was substituted with a manslaughter conviction and 25-year jail term in 1997.
Gederon was in a relationship with his victim, 24-year-old Ramsey, an employee at Cable & Wireless, now LIME, when he killed her.
She was reported missing in mid-July 1994 and Gederon subsequently led police to her body, dumped in the vicinity of Mount Obama (Boggy Peak). He was arrested and charged on July 21 that year.
For Ramsey’s family, news of Gederon’s release came as a surprise.
“We didn’t know he was going to be released so soon. We weren’t notified of his release but all in all I guess God will take care of that.
“The memory is still very, very painful for us today,” one of the victim’s sisters told OBSERVER Media yesterday.
Gederon’s discharge came a year earlier than prison authorities calculated as High Court Justice Mario Michel yesterday ordered his release after hearing evidence in an application for a writ of habeas corpus.
Such writs are issued in order to have a prisoner taken before the court, usually for a decision on whether the detention is lawful.
The convict’s application, filed in June this year by attorneys John Fuller and Nelisa Spencer, stated that, according to Gederon’s calculations, he should have completed his sentence in September 2008.
Gederon said the authorities ought to have counted his sentence from July 20, 1994, when he was first remanded in custody to await his trial, or from December 1995 when he was found guilty in the High Court and had to wait 11 months for the outcome of an appeal.
The convict further noted that since his conduct was exemplary he was entitled to remission of one third of his sentence according to the Prison Rule 211. Thus he should have served 16 years and eight months.
Prison Superintendent Percy Adams told Justice Michel that the authorities agreed his sentence commenced from early 1997 when the Court of Appeal reduced his sentence.
He based that on the fact that neither the High Court nor the Court of Appeal mentioned that the time spent on remand was to be considered as part of Gederon’s sentence.
But in the judgment delivered yesterday morning, Justice Michel noted, “All things considered, including the fact that Gederon has been incarcerated for over 18 years now and has apparently been a model prisoner by virtue of his exemplary behaviour whilst in prison, I will credit him with the full 11 months of his incarceration between his conviction and his appeal and order his immediate release from prison.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.