Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
P.J. Patterson, in a national broadcast on Wednesday, announced that the Government would be initiating further discussions with
the Opposition with a view to achieving bi-partisan consensus on resuming hanging.
Opposition Leader Bruce Golding, during a recent trip to the United Kingdom, declared his support for the resumption of hanging.
FORGET IT! - EU parliamentarian tells Jamaica 'no' to the death penalty
GLENYS KINNOCK, co-chair of the African, Caribbean and Pacific/European Union Parliamentary Assembly, is urging Jamaica and other English-speaking Caribbean countries to abolish the death penalty, immediately.
"I think it's an absolutely fundamental aspect of how a democracy tackles crime. To take a life in that way is not the way to set an example as a state of how you should conduct your business," Kinnock told The Sunday Gleaner, during a visit to Jamaica last week.
Kinnock was in Jamaica as part of a tour of Caribbean states within the African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) group affected by a European Union decision to reduce the guaranteed price paid for sugar purchased from these countries by EU members.
On that score, the British Member of the European Parliament (MEP) asserted that she was in full solidarity with Jamaica and other ACP sugar producers, describing the European stance on the price reduction as both illegal and immoral.
FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE
On the question of the death penalty, however, her position is very much in line with European orthodoxy. "It's a fundamental issue for the European Union. It's a written-in commitment that no member state of the union will have the death penalty," she reaffirmed.
With the murder rate in Jamaica soaring, there have been many calls for resumption of hanging for convicted murderers, on hold since early 1988.
PATHWAY TO GALLOWS MORE DIFFICULT
Despite many avowals that it would exact the maximum penalty for those sentenced to die, the current People's National Party (PNP) administration, in office since 1989, has failed to hang a single murderer.
The pathway to the gallows became much more difficult for Jamaica and other Commonwealth Caribbean countries in 1993, following the Pratt and Morgan ruling by the Judicial Committee of the United Kingdom-based Privy Council.
Under that ruling, persons under a sentence of death for more than five years are automatically removed from death row and given a life sentence, the law lords arguing that to be waiting to be executed for longer constituted cruel and inhuman punishment. Caribbean government argued, on the other hand, that their hands were tied by the inordinately long appeal process afforded murder convicts, much of it, they contended, beyond their control.
The appeals process became more complicated a few years later with the Privy Council ruling in the Neville Lewis case, which effectively opened another avenue of appeals, making the prospect of anyone being hanged even more remote.
NO TO HANGING!
That's just fine for Glenys Kinnock, wife of former British Labour Party Leader, Neil Kinnock who is now a vice-president of the European Commission.
While professing grave concern for Jamaica, arising from the high crime rate, she insisted that there was no evidence to support the argument that resuming executions would result in a reduction.
She pointed to South Africa, which, under its new post-apartheid constitution, abolished the death penalty. "No one," she said, "could say that they don't have enormous problems dealing with crime, but they never saw the death penalty as a solution."
Jamaica's murder rate has now reportedly eclipsed that of South Africa.
Kinnock confirmed that she intended to raise her concerns regarding the death penalty when she met with Jamaican government officials during her recent visit.
Such discussions, if they were held, would have come at an opportune time. Prime Minister P.J Patterson, in a national broadcast on Wednesday night, announced that the Government would be initiating further discussions with the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) on the possible achievement of by-partisan consensus on how to resume hanging.
That followed news reports out of the U.K. that Opposition Leader Bruce Golding, during a trip to that country, had declared his support for a resumption of hanging.
The Government has long been arguing that only a constitutional amendment permitting a departure from the strictures imposed by Pratt and Morgan, as was done by Barbados, would facilitate a resumption of hanging.
So far there has not been any agreement from the Opposition whose support is needed to secure the required parliamentary majority to pass the amendment proposed by the Government.
But, even amongst the ranks of the governing party, there are sceptics on the question of the death penalty. Sharon Hay Webster, government backbencher and the ACP's co-chair with Glenys Kinnock of the EU-ACP Parliamentary Assembly, has grave doubts.
"The truth is, many of us have been struck by reports that have shown, internationally, that the manner in which evidence has been collected and presented has compromised some people's lives. And when you choose to take someone's life in that way, you really must ensure that you have the right to do so, and I don't think we have been given that right, ultimately," she argued.
Looking at her own constituency of South Central St. Catherine, sections of which are troubled by a high crime rate, Hay Webster suggested that hanging a few murder convicts would not make a difference to that problem. "What's going to make the difference is to create new opportunities for young people. Change the social equation within these communities and we'll have changed behaviour," she asserted.
AGAINST
PNP
Dr. Paul Robertson, Phillip Paulwell and
Fitz Jackson.
JLP
Delroy Chuck, Andrew Gallimore, Everald Warmington, Olivia 'Babsy' Grange, Mike Henry, Andrew Holness, James Robertson and Karl Samuda.
IN FAVOUR
PNP
Dr. Fenton Ferguson, John Junor, Aloun Assamba, Maxine Henry-Wilson, Roger Clarke, Victor Cummings, Dr. Patrick Harris, Dr. Morais Guy, Harry Douglas, Dr. Neil McGill, Dean Peart, Michael Peart, Horace Dalley, Robert Pickersgill, Dr. Omar Davies, Errol Ennis, O.T. Williams, Dr. Beil McGill, Derrick Kellier, Lenworth Blake, Dr. Donald Rhodd and Charles Learmond.
JLP
Edmund Bartlett, St. Aubyn Bartlett, Pearnel Charles, Joseph Hibbert, J.C. Hutchinson, Verna Parchment, Shahine Robinson, Audley Shaw, Derrick Smith, Ernest Smith, Ruddy Spencer and Clive Mullings. February 2005
