Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
THE SENTENCING of 40 murder convicts on death row is being delayed because the new amendment to the Offences Against the Person Act does not set out the procedural guidelines for sentencing.
Arlene Harrison-Henry, president of the Jamaican Bar Association (JBA), disclosed yesterday that the association and the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights (IJCHR) are in the process of working out guidelines to be followed in sentencing persons convicted of capital murder.
"The amendment has not set out any procedural guidelines whatsoever or what the standard and burden of proof should be in regards to the entire sentencing hearing," Mrs. Harrison-Henry said.
The guidelines will be sent to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in a bid to arrive at an agreement. Mrs. Harrison-Henry said the two organisations are proposing in the guidelines that there should be in-depth antecedents of the convicts, social enquiry reports and psychiatric reports.
The Act was amended following the United Kingdom-based Privy Council ruling in July last year that the mandatory death sentence for capital murder was unconstitutional.
CASES RESCHEDULED
The cases of six of the 40 murder convicts, scheduled for sentencing yesterday in the Home Circuit Court were rescheduled. One of those cases is that of Odean Harris, of Rock Hall, St. Andrew, who was convicted of the capital murder of three family members on October 16, 2002, the day of the last general election. Several men, including Harris who were wearing green T-shirts with JLP printed on them, entered the house of the three and shot them dead. The deceased were 21-year-Jacqueline Baugh and her brother 15-year-old Joel Baugh and their 37-year-old mother Angela Davis.
Following the Privy Council's ruling last year in the Jamaican case of Lambert Watson, the Government amended the Offences Against the Person Act, paving the way for judges to determine whether a person who is convicted of capital murder should be sentenced to death or to imprisonment for life. The amendment has been in effect since February 17 this year but so far no murder convict has been sentenced.
Mrs. Harrison-Henry pointed out that although section 3 (1E) of the Act states that, before sentencing a person convicted of capital murder, "the court shall hear submissions, representations and evidence from the prosecution and the defence, in relation to the issue of the sentence to be passed," there is no guideline as to how that should be done. She said "there is no provision as to any notice requirements on the nature of the submissions, representations and evidence".
Mrs. Harrison-Henry said that since October last year, the Bar Association had been putting on seminars to inform attorneys-at-law what their professional responsibilities were in regards to the sentencing hearing.
