Ramario Antonio Roach yesterday confessed to the manslaughter of three people, one of whom was his mother, whose throat he sliced before he dropped a boulder on her head.
The reason the State accepted manslaughter by diminished responsibility from him, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale later explained, was because of reports detailing Roach’s schizophrenia, which was caused by a genetic pre-disposition and fuelled by drug abuse.
“We are complying with the law but the average person, untrained in law, would jump to the verdict it must be a murder. Serial killing? He must be convicted of murder, but the law does not say that,” Seale said.
“We have before us the medical reports and we can only abide by the reports and they conclude that, at the time, he was suffering from a defect of the mind. And he made it worse with the use of cannabis. So we can do nothing else but accept the pleas in accordance with the law,” Seale explained. (HLE)
