A Brit who was sentenced to death in the US despite later being proven innocent by a judge has died while still incarcerated in Florida.
Kris Maharaj spent an agonising 38 years behind bars for the murder of a father and son, who were alleged to have stolen laundered money from notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The 85-year-old was convicted by a US court in 1986 and sent to Death Row. In 2002, after spending 17 years awaiting a lethal injection, Maharaj's sentence was overturned and commuted to life.
In 2019, with the assistance of anti-death penalty lobby Reprieve, co-founded by Clive Stafford Smith, a judge ruled that he had proved his innocence. However, a US Court of Appeal decided the evidence of his innocence was not sufficient to secure his release.
While still battling for his freedom Maharaj passed away on Tuesday last week (August 6) inside a prison hospital. Human rights lawyer Stafford Smith shared the news in a post on X, reports the Mirror.
Smith revealed Maharaj's body will be returned to England as per his and his wife's wishes, and that the funeral will take place in Bridport "in due course". Following his death, his wife Marita said: "I promised Kris in 1976 that we would be together until death us do part, and I am devastated that he died alone in that horrible place."
Mr Maharaj's brother is desperate to have his body returned to the UK because, as he revealed: "I want him brought back to the UK for burial as the last place he would want to be is where he was falsely charged with murder.
"Then I will devote the rest of the time that God allows me to clearing his name, so I can go to meet him in heaven with a clear conscience that I have done my best for him."
His brother and former attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj paid tribute saying "Kris always maintained his innocence".
He added: "Based on the information he gave me at the time when he was charged for the offences, I formed the opinion that he was innocent. In my conversations with him during the period of time he was incarcerated and during my visits to see him in the prison, I was further convinced that he was innocent.
"I witnessed the trial in Miami and realised that all the requisite evidence which should have been led before the jury was not produced to the court. All efforts thereafter to fight that conviction and get a new trial failed.
"He was, however, successful in getting a ruling from a judge that he was innocent. The US Appeal Court, however, ruled that the evidence of innocence was not enough to free him. He was successful in getting the death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
"It is unfortunate that those who were responsible for his first trial did not take steps to have all the relevant evidence put before the jury, That error led to him not being able to get a second chance at a retrial to produce all of the evidence.
"He found this legal battle to assert his innocence for approximately 37 years and during that period of time. He continuously maintained his innocence."
Maharaj, originally from Trinidad but relocated to England in 1960, was held accountable for the murder of a father and son duo. The Briton has consistently fought to prove his innocence, claiming he was set up for the killings, despite prosecutors arguing he committed the murders over an unpaid debt.
The British man had some business dealings with one of the victims, Derrick Moo Young, who Maharaj claimed swindled him out of £315,000. At the time of Young's death, Maharaj was pursuing a lawsuit against him.
Young and his son Duane were discovered dead in their hotel on the same day Maharaj had arranged to meet a business associate, who never showed up. His fingerprints were found in the hotel room where the shootings took place.
Maharaj claimed he was present for a meeting but had left before the Moo Youngs were murdered. According to the defence, nineteen fingerprints discovered at the crime scene remain unidentified.
Maharaj's legal team has claimed that evidence points to ex-members of a Colombian cartel as the real culprits behind the murders. A 2014 motion from his US lawyers revealed: "A Colombian drug cartel member confirmed that the Moo Young murders were committed at the behest of Pablo Escobar.
"The Moo Youngs were laundering money for the Colombian cartels," stated the defence motion. "This is what precipitated their murders."
An ex-cartel insider has verified that "Maharaj was not involved in the murders of the Moo Youngs and that they had to be eliminated because they had lost Colombian drug money," according to the defence motion. There were hopes that fingerprints in the Muriel McKay murder files might have cleared Maharaj.
His lawyer, Stafford Smith, is convinced he was framed by a mate who did the deed in a Miami hotel room back in '86. This man, Adam Hosein, was grilled by UK cops in '69 about Muriel's murder but fled abroad shortly after.
The Trinidadian lived close to Muriel when she was nabbed from her London pad, mistaken for Rupert Murdoch's wife. Hosein's brothers, Nizamodeen and Arthur, got life sentences for her kidnap and murder, yet her remains are still missing.
The case hit the limelight again last month after cops dug up the Hertfordshire farm where she was kept captive. Stafford Smith has been demanding that the old prints taken from Hosein back in 1969 be matched with some John Doe prints at the grim Miami slayings scene 17 years on.
He said: "The idea that Adam Hosein (now deceased) may have got away with murder in Britain and then got away with another murder in America in between all his drug dealing, and resulting in Kris going to death row and spending 38 years in prison is absolutely shocking."
Source: dailystar.co.uk, Abigail Hunt, Christopher Bucktin, August 13, 2024
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
