A self-professed voodoo priestess was jailed on Thursday awaiting sentencing for fatally beating a woman during a ritual to exorcise evil spirits from her and burying her body in a shallow grave, authorities said.
Judge Claudette Singh said she would decide on Wednesday how long Patricia Alves (44) should be jailed for manslaughter.
Police had charged Alves with the murder of Camille Seenauth between February 11 and February 15, 2002 but a jury late on Tuesday ruled 10-2 in favour of the lesser offence of manslaughter.
If Alves, who has been in jail since 2002 awaiting trial, had been convicted of murder, she would have been sentenced to death by hanging.
Singh said she would deliver the jail sentence after receiving a probation report on her conduct and hearing a plea of mitigation from her lawyer, Nigel Hughes.
A neighbour, who was one of the prosecution witnesses, told the court that she called the police after peeping through a fence and seeing Alves beating Seenauth with an iron pipe, and later the dead woman’s feet protruding from the grave.
About 39% of Guyana’s 770 000 people are descendants of African slaves, a tiny percentage of whom practice voodoo. – Sapa-AFP