BRIDGETOWN, Barbados--Lawmakers on Tuesday came as close as they have ever done to striking down a key provision of capital punishment – the abolition of the automatic death sentence – before putting a pause on the measure.
The Lower House withdrew the proposed amendment to the Offences Against the Person Act for further consideration by government.
The amendment was to bring the law in line with a Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruling that struck down the mandatory death sentence in the appeal cases of Barbadian murder convicts Jabari Sensimania Nervais and Dwayne Omar Severin.
Their separate appeals were consolidated because they both challenged the constitutionality of the mandatory death sentence for murder in Barbados. The justices ruled that a section of the Offences Against the Person Act was unconstitutional because it provided for a mandatory sentence of death.
But legislators left a clear message that the death penalty will remain the law of the land.
“Let there be no doubt that the Cabinet of Barbados has not made a decision to abolish the death penalty. ... What we are doing simply is abolishing the mandatory nature of the death penalty and making corrections and amendments to legislation to give effect to that,” said Member of Parliament for Christ Church East, Wilfred Abrahams, who piloted debate on the measure.
“It is not as if we had a choice. While we might have delayed in following the dictates of the Inter-American Human Rights Court or following the dictates of the conventions that we are signatories to, from the time the CCJ made the ruling that the mandatory death penalty was unconstitutional the CCJ set out what the new law for Barbados was going forward,” he added.
But the amendment to the law was shelved immediately following concerns expressed during the speeches by three Members of Parliament (MPs) – Ralph Thorne, Housing Minister Charles Griffith and Maritime Affairs Minister Kirk Humphrey.
At the end of those contributions, acting leader of Government Business in the Lower Chamber of Parliament, Lt. Colonel Jeffrey Bostic rose to table a successful motion that debate be suspended.
Leading off the discussion when the House resumed its post-lunch session, an emotional Thorne was adamant that the provision in the bill which empowers a judge solely with the responsibility of sentencing a convicted person to death, should be removed.
The senior attorney suggested that the decision should be made by jury, contending that it was too heavy a burden to place on the shoulders of one man or woman.
“I want to submit to you, your honour, and I want the public that feels very, very strongly on the issue of the death penalty, to consider whether the responsibility, the heavy and final responsibility of passing a sentence of death should fall on one person ... whether it should fall alone on the shoulders of a judge or whether, as in some jurisdictions in the United States ... that grave and weighty decision ... should be made by a panel of 12 persons, and whether that panel of 12 persons would be allowed only to pass that sentence of death if they are unanimous,” suggested the MP for Christ Church South.
He pointed to a murder case which was sent on appeal to the CCJ, in which it was the jury who had not only convicted the person but also condemned him to death.
“Under the system that we are changing ... at the urging of the Caribbean Court of Justice, in a very real sense, it was the jury that was not only convicting but was condemning that man to death. As I said, the judge’s role was ritualistic. This amendment ... places that entire responsibility on the judge himself,” he said, adding that parliamentarians must now invite the wider public into this discussion.
While the lawyer was quick to point out that this discussion had no political borders but was a matter of conscience, he stressed that the masses now ought to have a say in whether a judge alone or jury by unanimous verdict should decide if someone should be executed.
The senior lawyer also had issue with section 26 of the Constitution – the “savings clause” introduced in the Independence Constitution of 1966 to keep in force the full body of colonial law as the country ended 339 years of unbroken rule from London.
Thorne explained that this provision ensured that the country maintained any “bad or unjust” laws which existed prior to independence in 1966.
He recalled that a few weeks ago, the CCJ reminded Barbados that the clause should “not hold the country’s legal system hostage indefinitely.
“That court remarked that in Belize, when they introduced their independence constitution, their savings law clause was expressed to be for five years. In other words, it was transitional. What the savings law clause does in Belize and what it ought to have done in Barbados 50 years ago, was to have urged the Parliament to get busy ... that any law prior to independence which was unjust ... any law that was ripe for amendment, the Parliament of the country was urged to amend that law,” he told the Lower Chamber.
Thorne also remembered that the CCJ had said that the Barbados Parliament should get on with the business of correcting pre-Independence law as it related to this amendment.
“What is being done today ought to have been done a long time ago ... There is so much law that needs reforming in Barbados. There is so much law that is antiquated ... irrelevant ... law that needs to be updated with technological advances.
Thorne suggested that in the future, Parliament must use its initiative rather than have to act on the behest of external forces.
He urged Attorney General Dale Marshall that even when the amendment to the Offences Against the Person Act becomes law, he should return to the House soon to have it debate a system of degrees of murder as in other countries.
“I think the time has come when the degrees ought to be extended beyond what we have presently. At this point in time, we only have murder and manslaughter... And ... sometimes you get a sense that a jury believes that the penalty for murder is so severe that what might otherwise be murder they reduce to manslaughter. I suspect there are juries who have found men guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter simply because they don’t want the man hung,” added the prominent attorney. (Barbados Today) ~ Caribbean360 ~
