AN ARIMA man convicted of killing his 14-year-old stepdaughter in 2005 has lost his appeal.
On Wednesday, Justices of Appeal Alice Yorke-Soo Hon, Gregory Smith and Vasheist Kokaram dismissed Timothy Pierre’s appeal and affirmed his conviction and sentence.
In 2016, Pierre was found guilty of killing Stacy Gibbs at their Arima home on June 17, 2005. Gibbs was 14 when her mother left for Valencia, and Pierre left Gibbs and her younger brother at home while he went to the supermarket. A friend of the children called them out of the house, and they jumped the gate and remained to play in the road.
When Pierre returned he was angry and tapped them on their heads and they went back inside. Gibbs was not happy and allegedly told him he was not her father and it is the defence’s case that he was “triggered.”
At some point in the night, Gibbs's younger brother heard a scream and saw Pierre strangling Stacy, who was begging for her life, telling him she could not breathe and was sorry.
Pierre then beat her and she fell on the floor and stopped moving. Pierre put her on a table, still holding her neck, and she started to “beat up,” after which she stopped moving again. Pierre wrapped her in plastic, packed her clothes and carried her out of the gate.
Her body was found seven days later tied in a coloured sheet under a large stone tied with a piece of rope, at the bottom of a half-filled cesspit which had been covered with three pieces of galvanised iron sheeting.
Pierre took police to where her body was discovered in the shallow grave and told them, “Is here I throw she body.”
He also said he tried to talk to her about running away and hit her with a piece of wood on the neck.
At the trial, prosecutors said Gibbs told the girl’s mother she had run away and was also part of a search party until he admitted he had killed her and led the police to her body.
An autopsy was inconclusive, since the body had decomposed, but pathologist Dr Easlyn McDonald Burris said while she was unable to determine the cause or manner of death, she could not rule out beating with a piece of wood or strangulation as the cause.
A psychiatric examination found that though Pierre might have been of low intelligence, he had no abnormality of mind.
Although he did not testify at his trial, his defence was one of provocation and he claimed his confession was unfairly obtained.
The complaints of his trial included a ground that the trial judge erred in law when he allowed irrelevant and highly prejudicial evidence of bad character, which was rebutted by the prosecution. That evidence related to questions to Stacy’s mother, Coreen, to establish she was an alcoholic who beat her children and Pierre, whom she also threatened to kill by poisoning his food.
Pierre also complained about the admission of his previous convictions for housebreaking and larceny.
Another ground of appeal was that the trial judge presented a skewed summation in favour of the prosecution while failing to put Pierre’s defence adequately before the jury an
