Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
A LARGE number of murder convicts are now awaiting sentencing as the guidelines as to how hearings should proceed have not yet been completed.
Although the law was passed in February this year, amending the Offences Against the Person Act, it did not set out guidelines to be followed when murder convicts are to be sentenced.
This week, the cases of 11 murder convicts were set for sentencing but had to be put off until August because the guidelines were not completed. These persons were convicted within the last nine months.
A judicial subcommittee is preparing the guidelines and when they are completed it is expected that representatives of the Jamaican Bar Association and the Advocates Association of Jamaica will give their comments on the guidelines before they become official.
The act was amended based on a United Kingdom Privy Council ruling last year that the mandatory death sentence for capital murder was unconstitutional. The Privy Council ruled that the sentence was discretionary. The amendment gives judges the power to determine what sentence should be imposed on murder convicts. After the act was passed, lawyers called for guidelines to be put in place as to how sentencing should proceed.
TWO MURDER CATEGORIES
The act was amended in 1992, paving the way for two categories of murders, namely, capital murder, which attracts the death penalty, and non-capital murder, for which the sentence was life imprisonment. Where a sentence of life imprisonment was handed down, the judge had the power to recommend how many years the prisoner must serve before being eligible for parole.
The amendment now makes provision for only one category of murder but judges have the discretion to impose the sentences they see fit, whether death or life imprisonment.
30 AWAIT RE-SENTENCING
Yesterday, Nancy Anderson, legal officer of the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights, disclosed that there were about 30 murder convicts who were waiting to be re-sentenced. She said this sentencing would include all the murder convicts who were sentenced since the October 1992 amendment to the act.
Miss Anderson said that a sentencing hearing could be very lengthy since, before a sentence is passed, there has to be evidence and submissions. Murder convicts will have to be represented by lawyers who did not necessarily represent them at trial. This, as some of them wanted different lawyers.
The judiciary committee examining the guidelines should complete its work by the end of June.
