Trinidad & Tobago | Four convicted killers removed from death row

FOUR convicted killers housed in the condemned section of the Port of Spain prison at Frederick Street for decades have had their death sentences vacated.

In declaring that any attempt to carry out the death sentence on the four would be in contravention of their constitutional rights, Justice Margaret Mohammed ordered that they be immediately removed from death row.

She also ordered that the four be resentenced by a judge in the Criminal Assizes.

Mohammed will also assess damages due to them for the breaches of their rights at a later date and ordered their attorneys to file submissions on the issue in November 2023 and January 2024.

The orders were made on Friday.

The four who will now receive compensation from the State for the lengthy delay to execute them are Garvin Sookram, Jay Chandler, Keron Lopez and Mukesh Chandradath, who each filed constitutional motions alleging their rights were beached.

They are represented by attorneys Gerald Ramdeen, Wayne Sturge, Dayadai Harripaul and Nerisa Bala.

Each man presented the court with an affidavit detailing their complaints. Sookram, 48, has been on death row for 14 years, five months and six days, awaiting execution.

Chandler, 44, has been in the condemned section for 12 years; Lopez for 14 years, five months and six days and Chandradath for 12 years, two months and 19 days.

The men said being on death row for more than a decade has robbed them of the opportunity to prove to a court that they have served a satisfactory period of time to satisfy the requirements of retribution and deterrence.

“I would like an opportunity to prove to a court of law that I have served a proportionate and just punishment that equates to the crime that I was found guilty of committing,” one of the men said in their affidavits.

They said they all feared that if the court did not intervene, the State would continue to detain them indefinitely.

“ I have suffered and continue to suffer and will continue to suffer at the hands of the State unless this court intervenes in this matter,” the judge was told.

Sookram, a reputed gang leader from Sawmill Avenue, Barataria, and his partner, Lopez, were convicted on March 2, 2009, of the murders of Kerwin "Richie" Hinds, and Kerwin "Ox" Cyrus, on July 28, 2004, at Sawmill Avenue, Barataria.

Chandler was sentenced to death on August 11, 2011, for the murder of Kirn Phillip on October 8, 2004. Phillip died after being stabbed, while both men were serving sentences at Golden Grove Prison, Arouca.

In 2021, Chandler urged the Privy Council to declare this country’s mandatory death penalty for murder as unconstitutional.

In May, last year, nine law lords ruled on the landmark case, pronouncing that the death penalty would remain on TT’s statute books as the punishment for murder.

Although it held that the punishment was cruel and unusual, they said it was not unconstitutional.

Trinidad is the last country in the English-speaking Caribbean to retain the mandatory death penalty for murder and the case reignited the debate on the death penalty.

In their ruling, the nine judges reproached TT for keeping the hangman’s noose.

“It is striking that there remains on the statute book a provision which, as the government accepts, is a cruel and unusual punishment because it mandates the death penalty without regard to the degree of culpability.”

Chandradath was convicted of murdering Selwyn Grant, 65, and his 70-year-old wife Ursula Innis at their home at Allen Drive, Syne Village, Penal in 2011.

The couple’s decomposing and headless bodies were discovered by their grandson on September 16, 1999.

Grant was found under an abandoned tank in the yard and his head was found in a bag secured by wire. Innis’ body was found in a bathtub in the bathroom, while her severed head was found in a bag floating in a water tank.

Chandradath filed a malicious prosecution and false imprisonment claim seeking $1 billion in compensation which was unanimously rejected by the Court of Appeal in 2019.

Source: newsday.co.tt, Staff, August 21, 2023

_____________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW US ON:

CONTACT: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

South Carolina executes Mikal Mahdi

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.

Lethal Injection, Electric Chair, or Firing Squad? An Inhumane Decision for Death Row Prisoners

South Carolina resumed executions with the firing squad killing of Brad Sigmon last month. Mikal Madhi’s execution date is days away. The curtain shrieked as it was yanked open to reveal a 67-year-old man tied to a chair. His arms were pulled uncomfortably behind his back. The red bull’s-eye target on his chest rose and fell as he desperately attempted to still his breathing. The man, Brad Sigmon, smiled at his attorney, Bo King, seated in the front row before guards placed a black bag over his head. King said Sigmon appeared to be trying his best to put on a brave face for those who had come to bear witness.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Arizona | The cruelty of isolation: There’s nothing ‘humane’ about how we treat the condemned

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog