Privy Council limits Jamaica death sentence
Thursday, July 8, 2004
LONDON, England: The mandatory death penalty
for murder in Jamaica was abolished Wednesday, winning a reprieve for more
than 60 prisoners on death row, in a historic judgment from nine judges
sitting in London.
But, according to a report by the Guardian
newspaper, the penalty will remain in force in Trinidad and Barbados after the
same judges, by a majority of five to four, ruled that the clear wording of
those countries' constitutions barred them from interfering to strike it down.
The appeals to the Privy Council on behalf
of four death row inmates were considered so important that the court - the
final court of appeal for the Caribbean and some other former British
colonies, but made up mainly of UK law lords - sat as a panel of nine judges
for the first time. It normally sits in panels of five.
Most countries in the Caribbean have popular
majorities which support the mandatory death penalty as a deterrent to violent
crime. The possibility of its abolition by a bench composed overwhelmingly of
white judges thousands of miles away is a highly sensitive issue.
The nine-judge panel was headed by Lord
Bingham, senior law lord. He was joined by seven other law lords - Lords Steyn,
Rodger, Hope, Hoffmann, Nicholls, Walker and Scott - and a senior judge from
Jamaica, Edward Zacca.
The appeal was on behalf of four death row
prisoners, Charles Matthews, from Trinidad, Lennox Boyce and Jeffrey Joseph
from Barbados, and Jamaican Lambert Watson. Three leading English QCs,
Nicholas Blake, Edward Fitzgerald and Keir Starmer, argued their cases free of
charge.
The four men argued that there were
mitigating factors in their cases which could not be taken into account by
judges, who had no choice but to impose the death penalty once they were
convicted of murder.
The men's lawyers argued that the automatic
death penalty, which precludes the possibility of individual mitigation,
amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment, and breaches the Caribbean
countries' constitutions and their international obligations.
The majority of five judges, led by Lord
Hoffmann, held that they were constrained by the wording of the constitutions
of Trinidad and Barbados, which differ from the Jamaican constitution. He was
supported by Lord Hope, Lord Scott, Lord Rodger and the Caribbean judge Edward
Zacca. The four who dissented were Lord
Bingham, Lord Nicholls, Lord Steyn and Lord Walker. The minority, led by Lord
Bingham, would have abolished the automatic death penalty.
The judgment overturns a Privy Council ruling in November 2003 that the
automatic death penalty is unconstitutional in Trinidad.
But the judges Wednesday reprieved more than
100 prisoners now on death row in Trinidad, ruling it would be unfair to
deprive them of the benefit of the earlier ruling.
In countries where the mandatory death
penalty has been struck down, courts are still free to impose it but only for
the most serious cases.
It has already gone in the eastern
Caribbean, following a ruling in 2001 by the Eastern Caribbean court of appeal
that the automatic imposition of the death penalty without any judicial
discretion amounts to cruel and inhuman punishment.
In 2002, the Privy Council upheld that
judgment in three cases from St Lucia, Belize and St Kitts, and sent the
prisoners concerned back to courts in their own countries for resentencing.
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