THE LAST time the death penalty was carried out in Trinidad and Tobago, it was not a single event but a series of executions carried out over four days in June and July of 1999. That was when ten men, Dole Chadee and members of his criminal gang, were hanged for the murder of one of their alleged associates and his family.
More hangings followed on July 28, 1999, when Anthony Briggs and Wenceslaus James were hanged.
The events sparked major controversy locally and abroad, with criticisms from several international agencies and individuals lobbying for the abolition of the death penalty. The outcry was especially strident in the case of James who had an appeal pending before the Organisation of American States (OAS) at the time of his execution.
When those executions were carried out, Basdeo Panday was Prime Minister, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj was Attorney General and Kamla Persad-Bissessar, now this country’s Prime Minister, was Legal Affairs Minister.
Now with calls for the resumption of hangings, led by Works and Transport Minister Austin Jack Warner, this country is once again caught up in the emotive and contentious debate about capital punishment.
As Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar pointed out at last week’s post-Cabinet briefing, death by hanging as punishment for murder is the law in this country. That has been the case since 1925 under the Offences Against the Person Act which stipulates death by hanging as the only applicable punishment for the crime of murder.
According to Section 4 of the Offences Against the Person Act (Chapter 11:08) “Every person convicted of murder shall suffer death” and the Criminal Procedure Act (Chapter 12:02) in section 57 provides: “(1) Every warrant for the execution of any prisoner under sentence of death shall be under the hand and seal of the President, and shall be directed to the Marshal, and shall be carried into execution by such Marshal or his assistant at such time and place as mentioned in the warrant; and the warrant shall be in the form set out as Form A in the Second Schedule …”
Form A states that the person involved has been sentenced to be “hanged by the neck until he be dead”. The President of the Republic, in signing the warrant, authorises the execution in that manner.
However, while hanging is still legal in this country, recent calls for the death penalty to be enforced come at a time when there is a strong global movement for its abolition. In fact, the movement for the abolition of capital punishment began as far back as the 18th century with the writings of Montesquieu and Voltaire and has been gaining momentum since then.
However, the English-speaking Caribbean has remained largely unaffected by that abolitionist trend. In December 2008, this country along with Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, voted against a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions. The English-speaking Caribbean made up almost a quarter of the countries who voted against the resolution.
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