In each of those cases, the men were convicted on a lesser charge of manslaughter.

“It would appear that while the murder of a man by his wife is a murder to be regarded seriously, the murder of a woman and an unborn child by her husband is only a killing and therefore is not such a serious issue,” the coalition said in a news release after Renaud’s sentencing. “Longer sentences are given for possession of cocaine. And this is not unique to Trinidad and Tobago.”

Ramesh Maharaj, the nation’s attorney general, rejected the charge.

“If that is the case, then it is an accusation that should be made in a court of law,” he said.

Of the Ramjattan case, he said: “The fact is, Pamela Ramjattan got a trial before a judge and jury. She had every opportunity to present her case. And the conviction was upheld by the [Trinidadian] Court of Appeal. You have a situation where you had 12 jurors, three judges in the Court of Appeal and three judges in the United Kingdom who said there was no travesty of justice.”

In fact, Ramjattan’s lawyers chose not to present evidence of her years of abuse at her 1995 trial. Rather, it was the prosecution that used the abuse to reinforce the argument that Ramjattan had a strong motive to murder her husband.

Her lawyers also chose not to focus on the abuse in her first appeal to the Privy Council, which declined to hear the case two years ago despite acknowledging that she had suffered years of abuse that the panel called “a reign of terror.”

Local lawyers said Ramjattan’s defense was complicated by the fact that, at the time of her husband’s death, she was pregnant with the child of her lover, who was charged and convicted, along with a friend, of beating Jordan to death in his sleep. Both are appealing their death sentences. Ramjattan conceded that she summoned and opened the door for her husband’s killers that night.

Extent of Brutality Slow to Surface

It was only last year, Mahabir-Wyatt and several local attorneys say, that they learned through interviews with Ramjattan on death row about the extent of the brutality. They hired a British lawyer and filed the appeal now pending before the Privy Council, a rare request for a rehearing by the high court that could set a precedent for the islands: that domestic abuse can justify homicide in self-defense.

Specifically, the appeal asks the council to reconsider the case based on new evidence: a 17-page psychiatric report on Ramjattan by a London-based expert on domestic abuse. Forensic psychiatrist Nigel Eastman of London’s St. George’s Hospital Medical School concluded that Ramjattan was a classic victim of “battered woman syndrome.”

Eastman’s report states that Ramjattan suffered “repetitive physical violence, culminating in a most severe attack on 4th February, repeated rapes … enforced isolation … amounting ultimately [to] imprisonment as a hostage in the days leading up to the offense, threats to kill, attacks with weapons, threats with a shotgun, worsened violence if she protested, worsened violence when she escaped, humiliation and mental abuse [starving and beating their children and refusing to allow them to go to school].”

Those finds are bolstered by several new affidavits from Ramjattan; her eldest daughter, Candice; and even Jordan’s first wife, Moonie Joseph, who alleges in her statement that Jordan abused her for 17 years before leaving her for Ramjattan.

The affidavits, filed last year in a separate, pending appeal to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, paint a picture that local social workers say is all too common, in some ways, in rural areas of the Caribbean. They assert that Ramjattan was, in effect, sold to Jordan by her parents when she was 17 and forced to live in a remote area where traditional gender values reign supreme.

Ramjattan stated that, after Jordan alternately threatened her parents and offered them cash, they sent her to live with him in a two-bedroom concrete structure without electricity or phone service. Two years later, she said, the abuse began: Jordan repeatedly beat, raped and threatened her with a shotgun for the next nine years.

Candice, who was 10 at the time of the murder, added in her affidavit last year that Jordan also beat her and her siblings. She stressed the family’s feeling of helplessness:

“My father was good friends with the local police. He went shooting for wild animals with them near our house, on average once or twice a month… . They would come back to our house before or after going shooting, and there they would see my mother’s injuries. She so often had black eyes, bruises and swelling over her face… . The police would never have done anything to protect my mother.

“I know that what my mother wanted was an end to all the beatings and abuse,” Candice added. “She did not want my father dead. She just wanted him to stop beating her and us.”

Maharaj, the attorney general, said he believes that attitudes of law enforcement toward domestic violence are changing because of gender-sensitivity classes being taken by police, prosecutors and judges. But he conceded that the drama of Ramjattan’s case–and the dilemma it presents his government–has brought increased attention to the death penalty issue in Trinidad.

But rights activists say Ramjattan’s case never should have gotten this far.

“The fact is,” concluded Mahabir-Wyatt, “attitudes in our judicial systems throughout this region–and the world–must change much faster, or we’re going to have a lot more Pamela Ramjattans.”

The Case of the Death Row Widow - Los Angeles Times