Trinidad to Rehear Case of Battered Wife

The Privy Council in London has ordered Trinidad and Tobago to reopen the case of a 36-year-old woman who was sentenced to death in the murder of her husband after enduring nearly a decade of severe physical abuse.

The three-judge panel, which serves as the supreme court for the twin-island Caribbean nation and other former British colonies in the region, ruled late Wednesday that Trinidad’s Court of Appeal must reconsider the case of Indravani Pamela Ramjattan based on new evidence indicating that she suffered from battered-woman syndrome at the time of the murder eight years ago.

The ruling, which could set a precedent in domestic violence cases in the region, came after Ramjattan’s attorneys argued that the years of abuse had clouded her judgment on the day that two male friends came to rescue her from her husband, Alexander Jordan, and beat Jordan to death. The two male friends are also appealing death sentences.

Ramjattan’s case has become a cause celebre for women’s rights groups trying to curb domestic violence in the region and end what they call a judicial double standard that punishes wife-killers less severely than women who retaliate against abusive husbands.

“It’s excellent,” Roberta Clarke, one of Ramjattan’s attorneys, said of the ruling, which stays Ramjattan’s execution for at least several months. “The best thing would have been if the Privy Council simply threw out the case. But this is the second-best thing.”

Clarke said Trinidad’s Court of Appeal is expected to hear the case in April or May.