There is no em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence which sug­gests the in­tro­duc­tion of the death penal­ty in T&T will as­sist in the re­duc­tion of crime. That was the po­si­tion by law lec­tur­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dou­glas Mendes, SC, dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the Sir Arthur Lewis' In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies (NALIS­ES) fo­rum yes­ter­day, ti­tled The Death Penal­ty in T&T. The fo­rum was host­ed by the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, UWI, yes­ter­day. Mendes, who chose not to "risk" hu­man life on what he saw as a "hy­poth­e­sis", spoke against the per­cep­tion that so­ci­ety should be dri­ven by vengeance and felt it was nec­es­sary to "root out" the caus­es of crime.

"There is some­thing wrong with us as a so­ci­ety say­ing here are prob­lems (ob­vi­ous­ly cre­at­ed ei­ther by our ac­tions or in­ac­tion), let us ab­solve our­selves from re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and take their lives just so we can ex­pe­ri­ence vengeance," he said. He felt crim­i­nals were more afraid of be­ing caught than they were of be­ing hanged and so the death penal­ty would con­tin­ue to be ir­rel­e­vant un­less the per­pe­tra­tors of such crime-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents were de­tect­ed and sub­se­quent­ly pros­e­cut­ed. Mendes was re­spond­ing to views ex­pressed by fel­low pan­el­list and an­ti-abo­li­tion­ist, Is­rael Khan SC, who said: "It was nec­es­sary to sat­is­fy the pub­lic's de­sire for vengeance."

So­cial work­er and for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) ac­tivist, Ver­na St Rose-Greaves, in echo­ing Mendes' abo­li­tion­ist sen­ti­ments, made her point clear in the pres­ence of co-pan­el­list and vice chair­man of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, Ver­non de Li­ma. She said: "We are skim­ming the sur­face when we sim­ply talk about get­ting rid of peo­ple rather than go­ing to the core of what has brought us to this sit­u­a­tion with crime. "This did not hap­pen overnight. Do we want re­venge or jus­tice." In al­lud­ing to the im­por­tance of safe­guard­ing the na­tion's youth so they did not spi­ral out of con­trol, Greaves re­ferred to the Dole Chadee mur­der case in­volv­ing the Ba­boolal fam­i­ly.

She ques­tioned some of her de­trac­tors with­in the so­ci­ety, whom she blamed for aban­don­ing the sur­viv­ing chil­dren (Os­wald and He­ma­tee) of the slain cou­ple and cit­ed both their im­pov­er­ished stan­dard of liv­ing and Os­wald's re­cent crim­i­nal con­vic­tion as be­ing at­trib­uted to so­ci­ety's ne­glect and os­tracism.

Greaves' crit­i­cism of hang­ing ranged from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hu­man er­ror in the hand­ing down of those sen­tences to the in­hu­man­i­ty at­tached to the prac­tice of hav­ing prison of­fi­cers and pris­on­ers (both of whom may have grown "fa­mil­iar" with per­sons on death row) play an ac­tive role in their ex­e­cu­tions.

She added while it was nat­ur­al for so­ci­ety to ex­press its frus­tra­tion and anger against the wave of crime in the coun­try, those con­di­tions de­mand­ed qual­i­ty gov­er­nance. "It is when things are dif­fi­cult that the met­tle of true lead­er­ship must show it­self...but on tak­ing up of­fice how do they (PP Gov­ern­ment) re­spond to hang them high," Greaves said, "and this Gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice wav­ing a hu­man rights ban­ner," she added.

It is the law

Pun­ish­ment by death was not meant to be a de­ter­rent but the re­sponse of a na­tion wish­ing to con­demn the ac­tion of crim­i­nals, said Khan. "It is a mis­take to con­sid­er ob­jects of pun­ish­ment as be­ing a de­ter­rent and noth­ing else. It is the em­phat­ic de­nun­ci­a­tion by the com­mu­ni­ty of the crime," he added, dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­cus­sion. He said there were "evil" men in the so­ci­ety who re­sort­ed to ex­treme­ly heinous acts of vi­o­lence and were de­serv­ing of death. "There is no such thing as a fun­da­men­tal right to life. There is on­ly a con­trac­tu­al right and if you break that con­tract (by killing an­oth­er) you have for­feit­ed your right to live," Khan said.

On that claim, Mendes said while he felt crim­i­nals ought to be pun­ished for their crimes, it need not take the form of hang­ing but that of "restora­tive re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion." Khan, who lob­bied for the cat­e­gori­sa­tion of mur­der, crit­i­cised Britain, which, he said, had no moral au­thor­i­ty to dic­tate T&T's de­ci­sion to hang con­vict­ed mur­der­ers. "You (Britain) can­not sanc­tion 400 years of slav­ery...hang peo­ple there for pick-pock­et­ing...then come here to tell us how to run this so­ci­ety," he said. Mean­while, De Li­ma, a crim­i­nal lawyer of over 45 years, added his stance on the dis­course by pay­ing homage to what he saw as the rule of law.

"Cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is the law of T&T. If a per­son is found guilty of mur­der the on­ly sen­tence is that he be hanged by his neck un­til he is dead," he said. On that is­sue re­gard­ing laws, both St Rose-Greaves and Mendes said slav­ery and the apartheid sys­tem (two very op­pres­sive pe­ri­ods in his­to­ry) al­so were in­stru­ments of the law at some point in time-a law which, they felt, was dra­con­ian now, as it was back then. De Li­ma, who al­so sug­gest­ed abol­ish­ing the Privy Coun­cil as the na­tion's fi­nal court of ap­peal, posed a ques­tion to the au­di­ence as he con­clud­ed his de­bate on the le­git­i­ma­cy of hang­ing.

He asked: "If you are sat­is­fied that the re-im­ple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty in T&T will re­sult in a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion of the mur­der rate, will you still ad­vo­cate its abo­li­tion?" That lat­ter is­sue re­mained a sense of con­tention dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings as nei­ther par­ty, whether for or against abo­li­tion, were ca­pa­ble of con­vinc­ing each oth­er, as well as the crowd, on the au­then­tic­i­ty of their re­spec­tive claims in that re­gard.