Death penalty 'stalemate' remains, as inmate approaches five-year limit
Prisoners hang in political limbo
BY ERICA VIRTUE Sunday Observer Writer
Sunday, May 14, 2006
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NINE prisoners marked for death continue to languish in their solitary cells, awaiting settlement of the political impasse on capital punishment that has effectively shut down Jamaica's gallows.[/align]
DENNY... death warrants have been read at least 15 times
[align=justify]"All are men," said Neville Graham, information officer at the Ministry of National Security, of death row inmates.
Graham was unable to comment on the status of the men's appeals; neither could prison boss Major Richard Reese.
"We are just custodians and we follow the directions of the court," said Reese, the Commissioner of Corrections.[/align]
[align=justify]"We have persons who are sentenced to death and they are housed accordingly, but the department can only act if a warrant of execution is issued by the Governor General."[/align]
[align=justify]A spokeswoman at King's House, official residence of the GG, said death warrants are issued on the advice of Privy Council members, saying that "once a convict has exhausted all appeals, including one which was dismissed by the Privy Council, it is that body which recommends that the execution order be issued."[/align]
[align=justify]But well placed sources told the Sunday Observer that some of the men have exhausted all appeals and are eligible for execution - to be done by hanging.[/align]
NICHOLSON... if the law remains as is, no one will be hanged
[align=justify]One of the nine death row inmates, David Gordon, would have spent five years on death row as at July 6, 2006. But Sunday Observer's efforts last week to ascertain the names of the six local Privy Councillors who will pronounce on Gordon's fate, and their meeting schedule, proved futile.[/align]
[align=justify]The Governor General's secretary, who is also clerk to the Privy Councillors, did not respond to queries made up to late Friday.
Attorney general and justice minister AJ Nicholson claims however that the men might still have recourse to the human rights commission, delaying the reading of warrants.
The local Privy Council can also recommend to the Governor General that a sentence be commuted.[/align]
[align=justify]Wayne Denny, Privy Council legal officer at the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights (IJCHR), said warrants have been read over the years since the last hanging in 1988, but government did not follow through with the executions.[/align]
[align=justify]He was unable to say whether these might have been cases constrained by the 1993 Pratt and Morgan ruling, which stipulates that sentences on death row prisoners must be carried out within five years or be commuted.
The UK Privy Council, in its Pratt and Morgan ruling, failed to put time constraints on appeals, which Nicholson has consistently interpreted as a subtle signal of the UK law lords' anti-death penalty leanings.[/align]
CHUCK... reading of warrants delayed to avoid executions
[align=justify]"As long as the law remains as it is, nobody is going to be hanged in Jamaica. Nobody," Nicholson said again last week.
"You have five years from conviction and sentence until the person is hanged. If the five years pass, the person cannot hang," he said, de-emphasizing, "the processes cannot be completed in five years."[/align]
[align=justify]Barbados, a country of 270,000 with a record of far fewer murders than Jamaica and a faster court system, has reached bipartisan agreement on constitutional amendments, Nicholson said, to get beyond the strictures of the Pratt and Morgan ruling.
"Why would Barbados do that if they could meet the five year process?" he asked.[/align]
[align=justify]Jamaica has tried to reach similar agreement, but talks between Nicholson and Opposition Jamaica Labour Party spokesman on justice Delroy Chuck paving the way to consensus have broken down.
On Friday, Chuck said the parties had reached "stalemate."
He accused the government of deliberately delaying the reading of warrants even after appeals are exhausted in order to avoid hanging prisoners.[/align]
[align=justify]"The present state of the law, under the Pratt and Morgan judgment, is that once the Appeals Court dismisses the appeal, the local Privy Council should consider whether a convict should be reprieved and, if so, it should be expeditious," said Chuck.[/align]
[align=justify]"If he is not reprieved, then the death warrant should be issued. But that is never done. They believe that because the man might appeal to the Privy Council, they shouldn't issue the warrant."[/align]
[align=justify]Chuck also claimed no warrants have been issued in a decade.
But Denny said several have been read at different points since 1998.
"For the last couple years on average there have not been more than 40 persons on death row. I can say for sure that death warrants have been read at least 15 times," he told the Sunday Observer.[/align]
[align=justify]Some of the cases were commuted to life after the Privy Council ruled in the Lambert Watson case that death as an automatic sentence in capital murder trials was unconstitutional, reverting the decision on sentencing to the trial judge.[/align]
[align=justify]Opinion polls continue to show that Jamaicans favour the death penalty, 76 per cent in favour, according to a Observer/Stone Poll on hanging in November 2005.[/align]
[align=justify]But the European Union, on which Jamaica is dependent for aid, is overtly anti-capital punishment, with one local official, who asked not to be named, saying Jamaica has been forced into an un-willing quid pro quo - not hanging in deference to receiving aid.[/align]
[align=justify]Last year, in a move that the government viewed as verging on interference, the EU donated $24 million to the IJHCR to be used for advocacy for the abolition of the death penalty, a remedy which remains on the law books, training for lawyers to fight death penalty cases, research on alternatives to capital punishment, and reforms to the parole system.
Denny, who is anti-death penalty, has now sided with Nicholson, saying the EU stepped over the line.[/align]
[align=justify]"I do not always agree with the Government, but I have to say that I agree with the Attorney General. The constitution of the land is supreme and I do not believe that any internal or external agency should seek to exert any pressure on a country's ability to carry out the stipulation of that constitution," he said.[/align]
[align=justify]Locally, the support for hanging remains strong.
"Some people say we must bring back hanging - I agree," said professor of international law, Stephen Vasciannie, an advisor to the justice minister, speaking at a bank function.[/align]
[align=justify]"I believe that all persons are entitled to a fair trial, but if the case is clear, and if the jury agrees that the case is clear, then, our current murder rate of 62 in every 100,000 persons requires us to act. But, I am keen to emphasize that we should not be bloodthirsty about this," he continued. "We should be absolutely sure that we are hanging the guilty."[/align]
[align=justify]His colleague, Professor Trevor Munroe, a government senator, has also called for mandatory death sentences for all child killers, following several cases of vicious murders and sexual abuse of minors.
The justice system itself is riddled with delays, which exacerbates the problem.[/align]
[align=justify]"For the Court of Appeal to hear a case, you have to get a transcript of the trial and this is where the time begins to be consumed," said Denny.
"Getting a transcript takes as much as a year or more and that is part of the five-year process. By the time the appeal court has heard the matter, a tremendous time might have passed. And, thereafter, he (the prisoner) is entitled to go to the Privy Council, and it takes a little time for the matter to be listed and the date to be set," he said.[/align]
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