PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP):
ONE OF two men convicted of killing three people during a robbery in December 2001 is scheduled to be hanged Monday, in what would be the first execution in Trinidad since 1999, officials say.
A prison officer read the death warrant to Lester Pitman, 26, on Wednesday, said Prisons Commissioner John Rougier. Death warrants are read five days before an inmate is scheduled to be executed, Rougier said.
Pitman's lawyer, Gregory Delzin, said he would ask the High Court for a stay within 24 hours.
A jury sentenced Pitman and Daniel Agard, 21, to death in July for killing three people, including a BBC anchorwoman and Agard's great-grandmother.
The murder victims were Maggie Lee, 83, her daughter Lynette Lithgow Pearson, 51, and John Cropper, 59, Lee's son-in-law.
It was not immediately clear if Agard had an execution date.
DENIED STATEMENTS
Agard and Pitman allegedly gave police statements implicating themselves but later said police concocted the statements and coerced them into signing by promising them immunity.
Police insisted the statements were made voluntarily.
Lithgow was a former anchor for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Cropper, who was married to Lee's other daughter, Angela Cropper, was a British-born agricultural consultant living in Trinidad.
Police found the victims with their throats slit in Cropper's home. Two television sets, a gold ring, two gold chains, a laptop computer and a car were among the stolen items.
Pitman allegedly told police that Agard killed the three after they both robbed the house. He later insisted he was innocent.
Death sentences are always carried out by hanging in Trinidad, but the Caribbean country has not executed anyone since 1999.
The Privy Council has blocked several executions in the Caribbean in recent years. But in July, it found that automatic death sentences for convicted murderers did not violate Trinidad's constitution.
