– court rejects custodial penalty
JUSTICE Navindra Singh yesterday sentenced Dwayne Jordon to death for the gruesome murder of his reputed wife, Claudeene Rampersaud, who was axed to death in an abandoned house at Den Amstel West Coast, Demerara.

Jordon pleaded not guilty to Rampersaud’s murder, but after listening to the evidence, a mixed jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty of murder.
Defence counsel Mr. Nigel Hughes had attempted to have the judge impose a custodial penalty on Jordon, in keeping with a modern trend by the court of imposing custodial sentences instead of the death penalty; but Hughes was unsuccessful, as evidenced by the penalty imposed on Jordon.
All in Justice Singh’s court were ordered to stand in silence as the judge passed the sentence of death on Dwayne Jordon, directing that the prisoner be taken to a lawful prison and then to a place of execution, where he would be hanged by the neck until dead.
But Jordon, who had suffered injuries in the incident –  including a wound that had caused his gut to protrude from his abdomen, and severed tendons — blamed  one ‘Bow-foot” for committing his injuries, while remaining silent when asked to explain how his wife met her death.
When the trial opened before Justice Navindra Singh at the Demerara Assizes some days ago, the judge and jury heard, that after the young Claudeene Rampersaud body had been found with chop wounds, the accused was also found, in a nearby clump of bushes, with a punctured abdomen and cut tendons.
The woman’s dead body was taken to the mortuary, while the accused was taken to hospital, and was later charged with murder.
The ensuing investigations delved into the question of how the accused had come to sustain his injuries, and whether it had anything to do with him being involved in a fight or otherwise.
Reports state that when the accused was found in a clump of bushes not far from the house in which the woman was believed to be murdered, he remained silent when asked by the police whether he had known how his wife came to be murdered.
But when asked who had been responsible for inflicting his injuries, he replied, “Bowfoot”.
DPP lawyers Mrs. Konyo Thompson and Miss Renita Singh conducted the case for the prosecution, while Attorney-at-Law Mr. Nigel Hughes represented the accused.