RIGHTS-TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: Let’s Hang ‘Em All!

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, May 18 2000 (IPS) - The Trinidad and Tobago government is gearing itself up for a long battle in its bid to re-introduce legislation which would have the effect of speeding up the execution of convicted killers.

The Basdeo Panday administration has indicated its willingness to fight anyone seeking to oppose the re-introduction of the Constitution Amendment No 2 Bill, which was defeated in Parliament two years ago. The government has not said whether there will be changes to the original legislation.

The previous bill had said “where a person has been convicted of a criminal offence in which the sentence of death has been imposed, and the time for appealing against the conviction of death has expired, or a petition or application to the Privy Council by the person has been refused, abandoned or withdrawn or dismissed, and the death warrant has been signed by the President, the High court shall have no jurisdiction to hear an application against the execution of the death warrant.”

Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, a former human rights advocate, has laid the groundwork for the new battle by launching a scathing attack on regional and international human rights groups, which he accused of having “no respect for our Constitution”.

“To serve their own ends, they would override this country’s Constitution, while the entire society is placed at risk as convicted murderers shield behind these human rights groups and their lobbies to escape the death penalty,” says Maharaj, who once headed a human rights organisation here before joining the government.

“The Government of Trinidad and Tobago maintains that the question of whether capital punishment should be abolished is a matter which is solely the responsibility of individual governments and Parliaments. International law recognises this principle,” he said.

The London-based Amnesty International has dismissed Maharaj’s statements as “grossly inaccurate” saying he seemed to be “deliberately misleading the nation’s population about international human rights law.”

Amnesty said the government’s motive for re-introducing the legislation was to allow for the execution of prisoners before the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Commission have ruled on their cases.

Maharaj said these human rights groups which encourage applications from condemned killers were “purely concerned in saving the lives of the condemned prisoners, even if that means disregarding the rights of the victims and the public interest.”

But newspaper columnist and former university lecturer Denis Solomon has dismissed the government’s accusation saying that it is ignoring the fact that its membership in the conventions that give its citizens the right to appeal to these human rights bodies “was a voluntary undertaking by Trinidad and Tobago to join the rest of the hemisphere in promoting the principles of justice elaborated by civilised nations over the centuries.”

He recalls the first attempt by the government to get the legislation passed. “The icing on the cake was that the Bill would have been retroactive, it would have applied to people who had been sentenced before it became law.”

Solomon says the government’s decision to bring back the legislation should be viewed with alarm since “a sinister implication of the Attorney General’s move is that if he is to hang the people whose cases are being delayed, he will again have to make the Bill retroactive.”

The Constitution Amendment No 2 Bill, popularly known as the “Hanging Bill” here, was soundly defeated two years ago in Parliament after the opposition Peoples National Movement (PNM) failed to give the required two-thirds majority needed. Both the government and the opposition mounted public platforms seeking support from the population and even made it an issue in the Local Government Elections last year.

The opposition had based its rejection of the legislation on the government’s withdrawal from the Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and from the American Convention on Human Rights.

The PNM has promised that on regaining political office it will reverse the situation. But Maharaj, in informing Parliament last week about the government’s desire to re-introduce the “Hanging Bill”, called for the support of the opposition.

“I am sure that if the Parliament gets another opportunity to pass this law, the people would want the opposition to support this government,” Maharaj said to outbursts of laughter from the opposition benches.

The government is basing its arguments on re-introducing the “Hanging Bill” on a number of factors, among them, the growing number of killers having their death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

Since 1998, President Arthur NR Robinson has commuted the death sentence passed on 23 convicted murderers, all of whom Maharaj argues had “suffered delays in having their appeals heard before the Court of Appeal, causing the time frames in Pratt and Morgan to be exceeded.”

The British Privy Council, the court of last resort for many Caribbean countries, ruled in 1993 that the death sentences of Earl Pratt and Ivan Morgan – who were convicted of murder in Jamaica – should be commuted to life imprisonment because they had spent more than five years on death row. The Council said holding prisoners on death row for longer than five years represented cruel punishment.

Maharaj said the total number of death sentences, which have had to be commuted by the state since the Privy Council ruling on Pratt and Morgan was 73.

But Amnesty International has disputed Maharaj’s account. “The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council recently ruled that if these (human rights) bodies take a prolonged time to examine cases, this time will not count towards the five-year limit,” it said.

The government says since Mar. 20, 1999, of the 69 persons on death row, 14 have appeals pending before the Court of Appeal, while 19 others have appeals before the Privy Council, the country’s highest court.

The other 39 condemned prisoners have appeals outstanding before the Inter-American Commission and the Inter American Court of Human Rights.

“The recent tendency of condemned prisoners to re-petition the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for a second time, has resulted in some prisoners having petitions before both the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights and before the Court of Appeal or the Privy Council,” Maharaj said.

Now Maharaj says the re-introduction of the “Hanging Bill” would have the effect of providing a time frame to complete their hearings.

Earlier this year, the government quietly and without much fanfare, withdrew the country from the Optional Protocol to the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, after the UN body had rejected the country’s partial withdrawal from the Human Rights Committee. The UN Human Rights Committee had also indicated that Trinidad and Tobago could not prohibit death row prisoners from applying to it.

The decision to withdraw from the UN body was therefore seen as part of the strategy by the Panday administration for the resumption of execution of convicted murderers.

In 1998, Trinidad and Tobago withdrew from the human rights covenant of the Organisation of American States (OAS).

Last year, 10 people p nine over one weekend – were executed despite international condemnation and appeals for clemency. However, efforts by the authorities to execute other convicted killers have been hampered by appeals from prisoners to the UN Human Rights Committee.

Maharaj says the government is now awaiting the outcome of the Jamaican appeal case “Neville Lewis and Others Versus the Attorney General of Jamaica” before proceeding to apply to the Privy Council to remove the stay of execution against two condemned men here.

Trinidad and Tobago government says it believes the Inter-American system had “sufficient time to complete” the matters involving the two condemned killers.

“Notwithstanding the obstacles which are placed in the way of the government in implementing the death penalty, the government is determined that the lawful penalty for murder must be carried out in accordance with the law,” Maharaj said.