Trinidad and Tobago to continue executions
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| Published on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 |
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By Oscar Ramjeet
Caribbean Net News Special Correspondent
Email: oscar@caribbeannetnews.com
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad: Trinidad and Tobago Attorney General, Bridgid Annisette-George, said that her government remains committed to carrying out the death penalty according to the rule of law.
Annisette-George made the comment to the Trinidad Guardian in an interview published on Tuesday following the ruling of Justice Nolan Bereaux who commuted the death sentence for 52 killers to life imprisonment.
The Attorney General in the interview said, "As emotional as it is, the government needs to be reasonable, rational in the position it adopts. The government's position is the death penalty is the law. We will enforce it in accordance with the law."
She added that the State could not execute the killers because of a 2004 constitutional motion that was determined only last Friday. She said, however, that "it does not affect the death penalty (imposed) from July 8, 2004.” Those persons convicted of murder and sentenced to death after that date are not covered by Justice Bereaux's decision last Friday.
The AG added that there remained about 30 convicted killers on Death Row. She said that the State was constrained by the Privy Council's Pratt and Morgan ruling, which gave a five-year limit for convicted killers to be executed.
The majority of the appeals, she said, that are pending came from decisions between 2006 and 2008, and pointed out that "the state is quite mindful of the time that is running with respect to those persons, and we are doing our best, through our attorneys in England, to try and have those matters listed in short order."
She stressed that new legislation would come to Parliament shortly to make it easier to carry out the death penalty. | | | | Reads : 262 | | | |
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