Harbour last November was yesterday sentenced to death for the murder.

A jury of seven men and five women took one hour and 20 minutes to find Damon DeRoza guilty of the premeditated murder of Lynae Brown last November. The verdict was reached by an 11 to one majority.

Once the foreman of the jury had announced the verdict, Chief Justice Austin Ward ordered DeRoza to stand and simply said: "Sentence for this offence is fixed in law and it is the sentence of death.'' DeRoza, looking puzzled but remaining unemotional, was then led out of the Supreme Court by prison guards.

The jury had earlier heard from prosecution witnesses how DeRoza, 21, had picked up his daughter from her grandparents on the pretext of going to buy candy.

But he then drove to Hamilton Harbour where he stripped the child and threw her in the sea. When she managed to get out he threw her in again and jumped in after her.

"I stood on her neck and was on her back and when the bubbles stopped I took my foot off,'' he is reported to have told Police.

Lynae's naked body was found shortly afterward by two fishermen. Despite attempts to revive her she was pronounced dead an hour later. A post mortem examination showed she had drowned.

On the second day of the trial yesterday, lawyer Mark Pettingill began the case for the defence by calling Dr. Vanessa Crawford, a consultant psychiatrist from St. Brendan's Hospital who had interviewed DeRoza several times after his arrest.

She said DeRoza had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was first treated in January, 1995.

"People experience things such as hearing voices commanding them to do things as in this case,'' she said.

"He was interviewed by my predecessor six days after the offence. He reported that, through reggae music, he heard the music telling him that he must make a sacrifice. He also began hearing voices telling him to kill his daughter as a sacrifice to the king Safri.'' Dr. Crawford claimed DeRoza had a history of mental illness and received a prescription just four days before he killed his daughter. She also explained how he continued to display psychiatric abnormalities after his arrest, including one occasion when he pulled out six of his own teeth.

"His mental state at the time of the offence was such that his mental responsibility would be diminished,'' she said.

But when cross examined by Attorney General Elliot Mottley, Dr. Crawford conceded that DeRoza knew he was killing someone.

And she also agreed that he knew he had done something wrong, that he had been in full mental control a few days earlier when he thought about killing Lynae and, of the two different motives he gave for the killing, there was no reason to favour one over the other.

"There's an explanation he gave to you to do with sacrifice,'' Mr. Mottley countered.

"But then there's the explanation that he gave to the Police that he didn't consider the child to be his and that the mother was loose and pressurising him for money.

DeRoza sentenced to hang Those are all rational. Is there any reason why one should be preferred to the other?'' Summing up to the jury, Mr. Mottley continually emphasised that, rather than being a crazed psychopath, DeRoza had acted with a cool and calculated mind just before the murder.

He reminded the jury of how DeRoza had hidden his bike around the corner from Lynae's grandparents' house so that they would let him take her out.

And he also highlighted the fact that the killer said he became nervous when his victim began crying and that he was fully aware that he was killing her.

But Mr. Pettingill claimed DeRoza had been ill for some time and had continued to display signs of illness after the murder.

"What you have here is a very troubled young man,'' he said.

"If you look at it as a whole and take the doctor's evidence, you come to the conclusion the man was very ill and acutely psychotic at the time of the offence.'' It was an argument the jury almost unanimously rejected.

Their final verdict ended a 13-month ordeal for Lynae's grandparents, Meredith and Adam Brown, who were taking care of the child on the day she died. Their daughter -- Lynae's mother -- was studying in Jamaica at the time.

The couple broke out in smiles and warmly shook hands with detectives who had worked on the case when the sentence was passed.

But, despite their relief, they refused to speak with reporters, saying that it was an inappropriate time.

A victorious Attorney General also refused to give comment. But Mr. Pettingill seemed genuinely shocked at the guilty verdict.

"I am very surprised,'' he said.

"There was only one issue here and that was whether or not he was mentally fit. I think the psychiatrist expert today said enough to put that in doubt but if the jury reject that, then what can you do? You can see that he doesn't understand that he's been given the death sentence.''