Grenada 13 win appeal

by Leroy Noel

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada: After spending over twenty years in prison for the killing of former Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his cabinet colleagues in 1983, thirteen leaders of the defunct People's Revolutionary Government have won a landmark court ruling in their favour.

High court judge Mr Justice Kenneth Benjamin has quashed the death penalty and the subsequent natural life sentences of the thirteen persons who brought a case against the state for violation of their constitutional rights including former deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard.

The convicted men were represented by Trinidadian Keith Scotland and convicts Ewart Layne and Selwyn Strachan who have gained their law degree in prison.

The judge ruled that the death sentences handed down during a previous trial is unconstitutional as well as the imposition of life sentences for the rest of their natural lives by the then Governor General.

Justice Benjamin also ordered that the state compensate the 13 for the failure of the Court of Appeal of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States to produce a written judgment.

The amount to be received will be assessed before a judge in chambers. The state was represented by Queen's Counsel Karl Hudson Phillips.

It was further ordered that the convicted men be remanded and within forty-two days be returned to a High Court judge to be sentenced. The Grenada government is ordered to pay costs in the sum of 15 thousand dollars per person.

The state has since announced plans to appeal the judgment.

Seventeen persons were originally convicted but only 14 were sentenced to death and subsequently got their death sentences commuted to natural life in prison. One of the 14, Phyllis Coard, is now in her homeland Jamaica.

The remaining three are on appeal before the Privy Council.

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