By Kevin Sangster
In November 2008, our parliamentarians moved via a conscience vote to retain the death penalty for certain serious crimes. They took that action even though they knew, or should have known, that a conscience vote to retain something that has always been our on law books was not the reason behind the death penalty not being carried out since 1988.
The parliamentarians knew, or should have known, that it is legal measures, chiefly the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in the landmark Pratt and Morgan ruling and similar cases following, that have effectively barred us from carrying out death sentences.
In the Pratt and Morgan decision, as it may be recalled, the JCPC held that a convicted person’s constitutional rights against cruel and inhumane punishment are violated if that person is executed after five years of his conviction. That decision has effectively caused the de facto abolition of the death penalty in Jamaica.
The problem with that court decision is that it has proven largely unlikely for such a convicted person to exhaust all his legal options (local appeals, appeal to the JCPC, and appeal to human rights bodies, such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights) within that five-year time frame established via the Pratt and Morgan decision. Certainly, the slowness with which the wheels of our justice system turn does not help the process.
There are ways to circumvent the JCPC ruling, such as the constitutional amendment done by Barbados, which too was affected by that JCPC ruling as the JCPC was its court of last resort at that time. Barbados has since adopted the Caribbean Court of Justice as its court of last resort.
The refusal of Jamaica over the years, transcending different political administrations, to adopt some tangible measure to circumvent the JCPC’s ruling seems to be sufficient evidence that there is really not a true interest or intent on the part of our parliamentarians to remove that legal barrier.
Without more, a move such as a conscience vote, over which there was much hype, is nothing but the parliamentarians cowardly appearing to be siding with the wishes of the majority of the Jamaican people who are overwhelmingly in support of the death penalty to punish some of the vicious criminals among us.
They merely maintain the talk and posture to make believe among the citizenry that they are willing to or are serious about reintroducing the death penalty, which can be effective at least as a specific deterrent.
Be the first to comment