By Barbara Gayle, Staff ReporterGUIDELINES WILL have to be worked out as to how the court will supervise prisoners who are detained at its pleasure, says President of the Court of Appeal, Ian Forte.
He was responding to last Wednesday's judgment by the United Kingdom Privy Council, which upheld a majority decision of the Court of Appeal, that it was unconstitutional to detain juveniles at the Governor-General's pleasure.
"It is not for the board to prescribe how that sentence should be administered, in order to give effect not only to the requirement that the offender be punished, but also to the requirement that the offender's progress and development in custody be periodically reviewed as to judge when, having regard to the safety of the public and also the welfare of the offender, release on licence may properly be ordered," the Privy Council's judgment said.
The cases of all prisoners detained at the Governor-General's pleasure will have to be brought before the Court of Appeal for them to be sentenced in accordance with the Privy Council's ruling. Some of those prisoners have been so detained for at least 20 years.
Justice Forte said, in response, that the court must have a system in which reports on prisoners are submitted to the court. The reports, he said, should include those done by probation officers.
"Some guidelines will have to be worked out as to how to supervise those prisoners," he added.
The Court of Appeal, in a majority decision handed down by Justice Henderson Downer and Justice Donald Bingham in May 2001, held that it was unconstitutional to detain prisoners at the Governor-General's pleasure.
The court said prisoners should be detained at the court's pleasure and sentenced Kurt Mollison to life imprisonment. The court recommended that Mollison, who was convicted of capital murder, should serve 20 years before he was eligible for parole. He was 16 years old when he murdered Leila Brown at her Stony Hill residence, St. Andrew, and stole her car.
Prior to the Privy Council's ruling, persons who were under the age of 18 when they committed the offence of capital murder were detained at the Governor-General's pleasure.
Kent Pantry, Q.C., Director of Public Prosecutions, challenged the majority decision of the Court of Appeal.
The Privy Council agreed with the Court of Appeal that the prisoners should be detained at the court's pleasure but set aside Mollison's sentence of life imprisonment and ordered he must be detained at the court's pleasure.
Following the Court of Appeal's ruling in the Mollison case, the Governor-General had remitted the cases of 13 juveniles to the Court of Appeal. Sentencing in those cases had been delayed to await the Privy Council's decision in the Mollison case. The cases are now scheduled to come before the Court of Appeal next month.
