MINISTER OF Justice A.J. Nicholson suggested yesterday that the government may seek to travel the route taken by Barbados in abolishing previous rulings by the Privy Council on certain death penalty cases in an effort to return to hanging.
"The only way that it was done in Barbados and the only way that it can be done in Jamaica is if there is agreement between the Government and the Opposition because that amendment to the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority both in the House of Representatives and the Senate," the Justice Minister said during yesterday's meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Caymanas Business District at the Caymanas Golf Club in St. Catherine.
Minister Nicholson said that he was sure the vast majority of the people of St. Catherine want the death penalty to be carried out, as a deterrent to crime, and that the "easiest passage" was through the abolition of the Constitutional requirement for persons imprisoned for five years to have their sentences commuted to life.
CONSTITUTION
"The Constitution has to be amended so that all these strictures about five years, they are removed," he said.
In Barbados, a constitutional amendment was passed two years ago, which prevented condemned prisoners from challenging their executions on the grounds of the length of time they have spent under sentence of death. The legislation invalidated previous court rulings by the Privy Council.
The Privy Council recommended in the early 1990's that prisoners on death row for five years or more have their sentences commuted to life, because of the strong probability that they would not be executed.
"The countries of the Caribbean are the only countries on the planet earth where you have that kind of stricture. In the United States, if someone is on death row for 30 years, they (still) carry out the death penalty," Minister Nicholson argued.
He subsequently called for St. Catherine's residents to lobby their parliamentarians if they want the death penalty to be brought back into effect, and warned that human rights groups would get more active if the amendment is brought to Parliament.
"Remember, their scheme, their aim is to have the death penalty abolished," he said.
