PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC:
DEATH WARRANTS are expected to be read to at least four more prisoners on death row this week, according to media reports in Trinidad.
The reports said that the warrants could be read as early as June 14, one day after the Advisory Committee on the Power of Pardon (The Mercy Committee) meets to decide on the fate of the four selected prisoners facing execution.
The move by the Patrick Manning Government comes after a High Court temporarily halted the execution of Lester Pitman, 28, who was due to be hanged today.
LAW TO REMOVE TIME RESTRICTION
The High Court has set June 27 for hearing a Constitutional motion filed by Pitman, convicted of murdering three people including Lynette Lithgow Pearson, 51, a former television anchor-woman with the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2001.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning said on Friday that legislation would be taken to Parliament next week to remove the time restriction for hanging as awarded by the court.
The Parliament will also be asked to approve legislation on flogging of persons found guilty of certain crimes.
Manning said the two pieces of legislation were part of government's latest strategy dealing with the whole crime situation in the country. He said: "From time to time we have unveiled various strategies and they have had varying measures of success. Some of them have not been successful as we would like them to be, but what we do is we constantly look for new ways of addressing the crime situation so that eventually we would bring it under the level of control as we like."
"This of course shall not deter the state from pursuing the execution of its constitutionally determined mandate in the very near future in respect of the other condemned prisoners," Attorney-General John Jeremie said in a statement on Friday.
But senior lawyers here say they don't believe that the State could execute any of the 83 death row prisoners in the near future since it would be illegal for the state to read death warrants to killers who have benefited from the Privy Council rulings that have effectively commuted their sentences to life imprisonment.
They point to the 1993 Privy Council ruling involving two Jamaicans, Pratt and Morgan, where the London-based court, the island's highest court, said that to carry out the death penalty after the expiration of five years, where the delay was not caused by the prisoners themselves, would be unlawful since it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
The Privy Council also ruled that while the death penalty was the lawful penalty for murder in this country, all murderers who had been in jail up to the time of the judgement should have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
