Four murderers get stays of execution - hearings set for Feb. 14 By Patrick Denny Stabroek News February 7, 2000 Four convicted murderers who were to hang today and tomorrow were last evening granted a temporary reprieve by the courts. In two separate hearings before Justice B S Roy, orders staying their executions were granted in a rare Sunday High Court session. Justice Roy was assigned to hear the ex parte applications after the lawyers for the condemned men were unable, up to midday yesterday, to contact Justice Nandram Kissoon who is assigned to deal with chamber matters, as he was out of town. The application for the stay of execution for Ravindra Deo, whose defence is being led by Rex McKay SC and Fitz Peters, was the first heard by Justice Roy. The writ of summons in this case is returnable on February 14. The order staying Deo's execution was served by a High Court marshal on the officer in charge of the Georgetown Prisons shortly after it was issued. Nigel Hughes and Gregory Delzin, a Trinidad and Tobago attorney, presented the arguments in the applications for the stays for Oral Hendricks, Lawrence Chan and Ganga Deolall. Theirs are also returnable on February 14. The orders staying their executions were also served on the Officer in Charge of the Georgetown Prisons by the same High Court marshal who had earlier served the order for Deo. The hearing of the matters in support of the stays for Hendricks and Deo will be before Justice Roy; Justice Kissoon will preside over the hearings for Chan and Deolall. All of the convicted murderers save for Chan have petitions being considered before the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). These petitions were filed before Guyana withdrew from the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in April 1999. This is one of the contentions in their affidavits. They all have claimed, including Chan, that they were not allowed a hearing before the Committee on the Exercise of the Prerogative of Mercy nor were they or their lawyers informed that their petitions were being heard. Additionally the three who applied to the UNHRC contend that the issues of natural justice which they intend to raise are being deliberated on in the hearings initiated for convicted killers Abdool Yasseen and Noel Thomas. The death warrants were read to Deo, Hendricks, Chan and Deolall on Thursday. Deo was convicted for the kidnap and murder of eight-year-old Vishnu Bhim, the only child of his parents. On September 29, 1997, the Appeal Court upheld the death penalty against Deo rejecting McKay's arguments that the murder conviction should have been substituted by manslaughter. Hendricks was convicted for brutally killing the three children of his reputed wife. The court had heard how Hendricks, threw the two-year-old Bumbury into a trench at the back of Klien, Pouderoyen, West Bank Demerara and watched him drown. He next threw in the four-year-old George and watched her drown. However, when he threw in the seven-year-old Braithwaite, the child swam to the surface and Hendricks took a knife he had in his pocket, slit the boy's throat and then held his head under the mud to ensure he was dead. Chan shot two men to death at Port Kaituma in 1993. Deolall had been convicted for the brutal slaying of Yvette Lall whose mutilated body was found on the La Grange foreshore by fishermen on October 19, 1993.