A man who stabbed his estranged girlfriend to death after a long history of brutally abusing her will have to wait until Monday until he's sentenced.Jermaine Pearman, 37, attacked 23-year-old prison officer Shakeya DeRoza at her home on Paynter Lane, Sandys, in July 2009.He pleaded guilty to murder on Tuesday and was due to have his punishment meted out by a judge this afternoon. However, proceedings stalled after more than three hours when the prosecution and defence got embroiled in legal arguments over crucial facts.According to prosecutor Carrington Mahoney, Pearman broke into the victim's home, slit her throat, cut her jugular vein and stabbed her in the heart. Prior to the day of the killing, he said, Pearman had repeatedly attacked mother-of-two Ms DeRoza.He was caught by a neighbour on Valentines Day 2008 punching her while she was pregnant with his child. She was holding her other young child, fathered by another man, in her arms.In January 2009 the couple were staying at a guest house when Pearman shook Ms DeRoza until she passed out. He left with her eldest child in his car, before phoning her and threatening to drive the car overboard into the water.Mr Mahoney read entries from Ms DeRoza's diary in the months before the killing in which she wrote of her fears that Pearman might kill her."I fear what Jermaine is capable of doing when not in control," she wrote. "It is bad, I thought he would kill me while I slept. I dreamed about not being able to see my angels growing up."Ms DeRoza told Pearman their relationship was over the month before he killed her. His response was to choke her, knock her to the ground and threaten to kill her, according to Mr Mahoney."Her two year old son saw some of it and was hitting the defendant to try to get him off her," said the prosecutor.Over the course of the night before the killing, Pearman phoned her 90 times.On the afternoon of the murder, Mr Mahoney said evidence from the scene suggests he bound her with tape and had non-consensual sex with her before stabbing her multiple times.Ms Deroza ran, topless and bleeding, to get help from nearby shops on Middle Road but collapsed and died before she got there.Pearman was arrested on the Railway Trail behind Somerset Bridge in Sandys later that afternoon. He was armed with a knife and suffering from what prosecutors say was a self-inflicted neck wound.Officers spent an hour-and-a-half negotiating with him before he gave himself up and was taken to hospital.Pearman, of no fixed abode, was employed at the Matilda Smith Williams rest home as a cleaner at the time he committed the killing.He was charged five days after the attack with premeditated murder and knife possession. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of murder on Tuesday, the day his trial was due to begin.Pearman continued to deny the killing was premeditated and to deny the knife charge. Prosecutors accepted his pleas.Today, Pearman's defence lawyer John Perry QC said a fight between the pair was sparked when a man Ms DeRoza had been in a relationship with turned up at her home while he was there on the afternoon of the incident.Pearman suspected Ms DeRoza was still involved with that man. According to Mr Perry, Pearman never forced his way into Ms DeRoza's home. He claims she attacked him with a knife too, causing the injury to his neck, but admits he went too far in what he perceives as "self defence."The dispute over these key issues, and whether or not Pearman raped the victim before the killing, was the reason the hearing ground to a halt tonight. Witnesses may have to be called to give evidence on Monday.The news that the hearing needed to be postponed caused gasps of frustration from members of the victims' and defendants' families in the public gallery at Supreme Court.