A SCORNED husband who killed his estranged wife in 1994 after he allegedly found her with another man whom she said she preferred and refused to return to the marital home has been resentenced by a High Court judge and released after serving close to three decades in prison.

On Monday, Tackoor Ramcharan, now 58, was sentenced to time served and ordered released by Justice Gail Gonzales.

He was one of more than 50 death row inmates who had their death sentences commuted to life in 2008.

In 2022, the Privy Council ruled these prisoners were entitled to be resentenced. Ramcharan was one of them.

On May 28, 1999, Ramcharan was convicted of the May 14, 1994, murder of his wife Naline in Mayaro and sentenced to death by hanging.

He appealed his conviction and sentence which was dismissed in November 1999. His petition to the Privy Council was also dismissed in 2001.

In her resentencing exercise, Gonzales said the court had to determine the appropriate sentence to incorporate mitigating factors, the time the prisoner already spent in custody and the deterrent effect of the exercise.

She acknowledged that in most cases that would be life imprisonment but imposing such a sentence could not be done without considering the facts of the prisoner.

She also said, unlike cases where there was no planned, premeditated attack, such as in felony murder cases, 'perpetrators of domestic violence must be dealt with firmly.'

'We must consider that this was a killing after domestic violence. The court must make note of the prevalence of domestic violence.

'It was present in 1994.'

The judge said a woman's life was 'taken away who considered that he did not want her to have anyone else.'

She said the killing was planned as is often the case in domestic violence matters and two children were left motherless and fatherless because of the prisoner.

Gonzales began with a 35-year sentence after which she weighed the mitigating and aggravating factors of both the prisoner and the offence.

She said Ramcharan was an alcoholic who abused his wife when he was drunk. She also noted that by its verdict, the jury which convicted him did not agree with his defence of provocation.

She also noted that despite his claims that he made amends with his children and his wife's family, this was not true nor had he engaged in rehabilitative programmes while in prison. She said other than art, he did not attend any of the prison journey programmes nor did he get help for his alcohol abuse or anger management.

While she noted he was a good prisoner who was allowed to leave the prison for approved engagements, Ramchran still made himself out to be a victim.

She reduced her starting point by five years, leaving him with a minimum term of 30 years on his sentence but said given that he had been incarcerated for 29 years and there was no evidence he was a danger to society, he would be sentenced to time served and released.

According to the evidence at his trial, the couple had separated and he wanted to 'make up with hi