A Port of Spain man has possibly become the first to plead guilty to capital murder, forgoing a trial and subjecting himself to the mandatory death sentence.

On October 14, Justice Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds read the death sentence to Ronald Cobham after she agreed to accept his guilty plea.

He was represented by public defenders Avionne Bruno-Mason and Collin Elbourne. Charmaine Samuel and Guiliana Guy appeared for the State.

The judge admitted this was “not a typical case” and was an “unusual occurrence.”

From as early as May 2023, when Cobham appeared before her, he indicated he wanted to plead guilty.

His attorneys from the Public Defenders Department wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions for plea-deal discussions. The judge said all attempts at a plea deal broke down and the DPP, in rejecting Cobham’s entreaties, ordered that the matter should proceed to trial.

But Ramsumair-Hinds said Cobham maintained he wanted to plead guilty and did not want to go to trial. She warned him she had no discretion at all in sentencing, since murder still carried the mandatory death penalty.

“In a hardly veiled attempt to discourage him, I could not assure him of a commutation, however remote the likelihood, and (said he) he would be remanded to the condemned section (of the prison) and lawfully executed.”

She also said his attorneys discussed with him the consequences of pleading guilty to capital murder.

“He understands clearly. There was no wavering or vacillating on his part.”

At Monday’s sentencing hearing, the judge called Dr Samuel Shafe, medical director at the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital, to testify to Cobham’s fitness to plead.

Shafe said Cobham understood the charges against him.

The judge said with the State’s position that it could not accept a plea for anything other than murder, and Cobham unwilling to go to trial, she accepted his guilty plea.

She also said she was assured it was not a case of “suicide by court.”

Ramsumair-Hinds again advocated for the categorisation of capital murder. She said the death penalty for murder with the requisite intent (as opposed to felony murder, where the intention was not to kill, which does not carry an automatic death sentence) remained valid because of the savings law clause – which protects pre-existing colonial laws and make them immune to constitutional challenge – “even if (the death penalty) has been viewed as cruel and unusual punishment."

She referred to the 2022 TT case of Jay Chandler in the Privy Council, which held that the punishment, though deemed cruel and unusual internationally, was not unconstitutional and will remain on this country’s statute books as the punishment for murder.

Ramsumair-Hinds also referred to the law lords’ rebuke in the Chandler case for keeping the hangman’s noose.

“It is striking that there remains on the statute book a provision which, as the government accepts, is a cruel and unusual punishment because it mandates the death penalty without regard to the degree of culpability,” she repeated from th