RIGHTS-ST. LUCIA: Human Rights Lawyers Score Another Victory

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Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Sep 23 1999 (IPS) - Human rights lawyers in St. Lucia were on Thursday celebrating the decision by a High Court judge that to execute a 33-year-old man nearly five years after he had been on Death Row constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Judge Suzie D’Auverenge agreed with the position of the defence lawyers that to carry out the execution of Morrel Cox, four years and nine months after his conviction was inhumane.

She said the state should have executed Cox “as quickly a time as practical” before commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment.

“Four years and nine months could not pass the strict test set by the highest court of the land that execution should follow as soon as practical after the sentence of death allowing a reasonable time for appeal,” she said.

“I therefore have no alternative but to grant a stay of execution and substitute the sentence of life imprisonment,” she added.

Cox was due to have been executed Thursday after being convicted in 1994 for the murder of housewife Donna John. The last execution in St. Lucia took place in 1995.

The defence lawyers headed by prominent St. Lucian attorney Kenneth Foster had argued that the delay in carrying out the death sentence infringed upon the constitutional right of the convicted man.

“You know what it is for a man to be there every night with the rope around his neck thinking of that (hanging). It is really inhumane,” he told reporters after the judgment was handed down late Wednesday.

Foster said the onus was on the state to “get rid of him right away” if it felt that Cox was a “murderer and an animal”.

The human rights lawyer and former Legal Affairs Minister dismissed the common view that if Caribbean governments which have suspended hanging should begin to execute condemned prisoners again, this action would deter would-be murderers..

“I don’t think capital punishment is in fact a deterrent, an example is Trinidad and Tobago. There were nine men executed just recently and up to today you have murders taking place in Trinidad and Tobago,” said Foster.

And reacting to the judgment, St. Lucia’s Attorney General Petrus Compton said this judgment should help to set straight all the talk on the reasons why many regional governments are in favour of establishing a Caribbean Court of Appeal.

“There are those who constantly argue that the Caribbean Court of Justice will be a hanging court, that Caribbean judges are pro- hanging and that if we remove the Privy Council you will simply have judges who will send everybody to hang,” Compton said.

The judgment showed “our judges are very capable of assessing a set of facts and coming to a determination either one way or another in relation to capital punishment.

“In fact our judges are no different from the Privy Councillors when they come to exercise their judgment on the question of capital punishment,” he added.

Some Caribbean governments have been unhappy with rulings from the London-based Privy Council – the highest court for many countries in the region – that instead of hanging some prisoners on Death Row, their sentences should be commuted to life imprisonment.

This ruling was first made in 1993 when Jamaicans Ivan Morgan and Earl Pratt had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

At that time the Privy Council ruled that being on Death Row for more than five years constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The two had been convicted of murder in 1979. The five-year limit for prisoners on Death Row was therefore established.

Having a Caribbean Court of Appeal would mean that the final word on whether a convicted murderer goes to the gallows or not would rest with the region and not the Privy Council.

Some analysts here also argue that some governments are intent on resuming hanging as they see it as a way of improving their political fortunes.

Trinidad and Tobago is estimated to have a 70 percent approval rating for the death penalty and Barbados is said to have an 88 percent public support for implementation of the death penalty.