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Thursday, February 13, 2025

Judge on abo­li­tion of death penal­ty:

It's a yoke around our necks

by

20151211

Whether the con­tin­u­ing im­po­si­tion of the death penal­ty which has not been car­ried out since 1999 con­tin­ues to be a de­ter­rent to cap­i­tal of­fences was ar­gued by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad as he made a case for its abo­li­tion in T&T.

Ad­vo­cat­ing his case for its abo­li­tion, Seep­er­sad said judges were yoked with the oblig­a­tion of im­pos­ing a manda­to­ry death sen­tence on an ac­cused con­vict­ed of mur­der.

The con­tentious is­sue of the pros and cons of the death penal­ty was brought to the fore at a sym­po­sium fo­cus­ing on hu­man rights is­sues, or­gan­ised by the Fac­ul­ty of Law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, in part­ner­ship with the Eu­ro­pean Union, on Wednes­day evening.

Seep­er­sad said even though there had been no ex­e­cu­tion since 1999 and con­victs, most of whom have been in­car­cer­at­ed for pe­ri­ods that ex­ceed the Pratt and Mor­gan time line, con­tin­ue to have the sen­tence of death omi­nous­ly hang­ing over their heads.

"But this is the law of the land which a judge is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly man­dat­ed to fol­low," he not­ed.

The sym­po­sium, which fea­tured lead­ing ju­rists, in­tel­lec­tu­als and ac­tivists, in­volved key is­sues of hu­man rights, in­clud­ing chil­dren's rights, LGBTI rights, the death penal­ty and prison/de­ten­tion is­sues. Seep­er­sad said the is­sue of the con­tin­u­a­tion of the death penal­ty was shroud­ed with a lot of emo­tion and had pos­si­ble po­lit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions.

"There is al­so a lack of em­pir­i­cal da­ta as to whether it has proven to have had a de­terred ef­fect in this ju­ris­dic­tion and one must there­fore ask how ef­fec­tive a de­ter­rent it has been, giv­en that no one has been ex­e­cut­ed for close to two decades and al­though it is the law, the num­ber of mur­ders con­tin­ue, to in­crease.

"It must al­so be ac­knowl­edged that our re­ten­tion of the death penal­ty is in­con­sis­tent with the po­si­tion that has been adopt­ed by sig­nif­i­cant sec­tions of the de­vel­oped world."

He said pun­ish­ment that was cru­el, in­hu­mane and de­grad­ing should not be a facet of na­tion­al life. He re­called Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, at the open­ing of the 2015/2016 law term, iden­ti­fy­ing the num­ber of con­vict­ed peo­ple that were on Death Row and asked whether as a na­tion, T&T could stom­ach the num­ber of ex­e­cu­tions that would be re­quired, if the or­ders of the court were to be car­ried out. He said the case for abo­li­tion must be con­sid­ered and in pur­suit of the spir­it of part­ner­ship with glob­al part­ners in par­tic­u­lar Eu­ro­pean part­ners'.

The judge said hu­man rights chal­lenges that face judges could be read­i­ly reme­died if there was the po­lit­i­cal will to do that which was right.

"Judges have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that the law de­vel­ops so as to meet the just de­mands and as­pi­ra­tions of an ever de­vel­op­ing so­ci­ety and de­ci­sions of the court should ac­cord with the in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man right norms."

He said he hoped that the dis­cus­sion start­ed by the Law Fac­ul­ty would pave the path for a mean­ing­ful re­view of is­sues such as the death penal­ty, dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and mat­ters of pri­va­cy and that judges would be saved from em­bark­ing up­on path of Ju­di­cial ac­tivism in an at­tempt to en­sure that their de­ci­sions ac­cord with in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­ed norms.


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