Shal­iza?Has­sanali

If At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi plays his cards right, the death penal­ty could re­sume in T&T in six to nine months' time. That is the time frame for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj es­ti­mates Al-Rawi needs to put mea­sures in place for en­force­ment.

Ma­haraj was at­tor­ney gen­er­al the last time the death penal­ty was car­ried out in T&T 16 years ago. His views on the mat­ter were sought in the con­text of Al-Rawi's lat­est moves to re-in­tro­duce hang­ings, as well as re­newed de­bate on the mat­ter at re­gion­al lev­el. This fol­lows the re­cent Caribbean Re­gion­al Con­fer­ence on Abo­li­tion of the Death Penal­ty host­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) in con­junc­tion with the British High Com­mis­sion at the Arthur Chung Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in George­town, Guyana. The con­fer­ence at­tract­ed abo­li­tion­ist groups from Eu­rope and the Caribbean for dis­cus­sions that fo­cused on three key is­sues–the death penal­ty in the Caribbean, whether it works as a de­ter­rent and the ex­pe­ri­ences of oth­er coun­tries in abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty.

Just weeks ear­li­er Al-Rawi had sig­nalled gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to ap­ply the death penal­ty for con­vict­ed mur­der­ers and the es­tab­lish­ment of a track­ing com­mit­tee to look at cas­es that war­rant cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment where all ap­peals had been ex­haust­ed.

"I cer­tain­ly in­tend to ap­ply the death penal­ty which is the cur­rent law in Trinidad and To­ba­go, through due process. The point is mak­ing sure that due process works ef­fi­cient­ly," Al-Rawi told re­porters re­cent­ly

The AG in­sist­ed that the death penal­ty was the law and he won­dered why it had not been ap­plied in re­cent years. He al­so hint­ed that in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing might be need­ed.

Sta­tis­tics on the death penal­ty in the re­gion are con­tained in a March 2015 book­let com­piled by the Greater Caribbean for Life (GCL). It shows that the last time the death penal­ty was car­ried out in T&T was in 1999 when An­tho­ny Brig­gs was ex­e­cut­ed. A month ear­li­er, drug lord Dole Chadee and eight mem­bers of his gang were hanged for killing four mem­bers of a Williamsville fam­i­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to the GCL book­let, the last per­son hanged in the Caribbean was Charles La Place, of St Kitts and Nevis, who went to the gal­lows in 2008.

T&T is among 13 Caribbean coun­tries that re­tain the death penal­ty and it is es­ti­mat­ed that be­tween 59 and 80 pris­on­ers are cur­rent­ly on death row in eight Caribbean coun­tries. Guyana has be­tween 20 and 41 death row pris­on­ers, there are 11 in Bar­ba­dos and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and T&T each have sev­en.

Since the 1993 Pratt and Mor­gan rul­ing by the Privy Coun­cil, the death penal­ty can­not be car­ried out if the pris­on­er has been un­der sen­tence of death for more than five years. In those cas­es the sen­tence is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly com­mut­ed to life im­pris­on­ment.

The last at­tempt to re­sume hang­ings in T&T was de­feat­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2011 when a "hang­ing bill" was guil­lotined in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives af­ter it failed to get the sup­port of the then Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment. The bill sought to amend the con­sti­tu­tion to make spe­cial pro­vi­sion with re­spect to cap­i­tal of­fences.

Ma­haraj: Al-Rawi on right foot

With fresh at­tempts now be­ing made to re­sume hang­ings, Ma­haraj said AG Al-Rawi's ac­tions are sim­i­lar to the mea­sures he took to re­sume hang­ings back in 1999.

"I set up a case man­age­ment unit which mon­i­tored on a reg­u­lar ba­sis the pas­sage of mur­der cas­es and with the co-op­er­a­tion of the Chief Jus­tice had mat­ters ex­pe­dit­ed. We were able to meet the dead­line and have ex­e­cu­tions done, in­clud­ing that of Dole Chadee and his gang," Ma­haraj told the T&T Guardian.

With­in six months of ini­ti­at­ing this mea­sure, hang­ings re­sumed in T&T, be­gin­ning with Chadee and his ac­com­plices.

Ma­haraj said Al-Rawi has "tak­en a step in the right di­rec­tion."

Re­celling that he had fought against the death penal­ty for many years, he ad­mit­ted: "When I be­came at­tor­ney gen­er­al I saw the law from the oth­er side."

Ma­haraj said if the track­ing unit is prop­er­ly man­aged, im­prove­ments are made to the po­lice's in­ves­ti­gat­ing ma­chin­ery and a DNA bank ini­ti­at­ed, "the death penal­ty can be im­ple­ment­ed in six to nine months." How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that Al-Rawi mon­i­tor op­er­a­tions and en­sure that any ob­sta­cles are re­moved.

While Ma­haraj agrees that death sen­tences should be hand­ed down to in­di­vid­u­als found guilty of bru­tal mur­ders, he strong­ly be­lieves the law should be amend­ed to pro­tect in­no­cent peo­ple from be­ing ex­e­cut­ed.

Ma­haraj, who in­tro­duced the DNA Act in 2001, said he was amazed that 14 years lat­er a DNA bank has not been es­tab­lished to match ev­i­dence in mur­der cas­es.

"Al­so the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre still needs over­haul­ing. I passed all the nec­es­sary laws and af­ter that noth­ing hap­pened. The past gov­ern­ments just kept amend­ing the law. I don't know what is go­ing on. Right now all the po­lice have as ev­i­dence are wit­ness­es . . . and you can­not have that if you do not have an ef­fec­tive wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme," he said.

A dif­fer­ing view on the death penal­ty was of­fered by for­mer high court judge Her­bert Vol­ney who said T&T should fol­low oth­er coun­tries that have abol­ished the death penal­ty.

"It's a pro­gres­sive thing to hap­pen. I have passed the death penal­ty in ex­cess of six­ty times in my life and on­ly one of those per­sons were hanged, that was Joey Rami­ah. I don't think Rami­ah was hanged for the mat­ter which I hand­ed down."

Vol­ney said the death penal­ty was proven not to be a de­ter­rent af­ter the hang­ings of Chadee and his gang.

Death penal­ty tar­gets the mar­gin­alised

At the Guyana con­fer­ence, Dr Asun­ta Viv� Cav­aller, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mis­sion Against the Death Penal­ty (ICDP), said abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty re­quires po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. she said in coun­tries such as France, Mex­i­co, Mon­go­lia and Philip­pines, gov­ern­ments were able to use their pre­rog­a­tive to grant clemen­cy or im­pose a mora­to­ri­um on ex­e­cu­tions.

"Such ac­tions paved the way for leg­isla­tive or con­sti­tu­tion­al re­peal of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment," she said.

Cav­aller said abo­li­tion does not mean that those found guilty of se­ri­ous crimes are not pun­ished in pro­por­tion to the crime.

"Death penal­ty is not the an­swer, though. There's al­ways the risk of ex­e­cut­ing in­no­cent peo­ple. It vi­o­lates the right to life, it's cru­el and de­grad­ing."

She said the death penal­ty tar­gets the mar­gin­alised, poor, mi­nori­ties and mem­bers of racial, eth­nic, po­lit­i­cal and re­li­gious groups and in­di­vid­u­als who do not have ac­cess to de­fense lawyers.

Fer­nan­do Ponz Can­to, deputy head of Di­vi­sion for the Caribbean, Eu­ro­pean Ex­ter­nal Ac­tion Ser­vice, said in 2015 the EU spent US$50 mil­lion to as­sist with crime and se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean. He said the EU would not tell Caribbean coun­tries what to do, but en­cour­aged an ex­change of ideas and mov­ing for­ward on the ba­sis of good prac­tices.

Lord Navnit Dho­lakia, of the UK All Par­ty Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee on the Abo­li­tion of the Death Penal­ty, said many coun­tries have re­alised that the death sen­tence has no place in a civilised so­ci­ety.

Dho­lakia, who has worked ex­ten­sive­ly in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in the UK, added: "There is no way in which a gov­ern­ment can sim­ply say this is the pub­lic opin­ion and this is what we must do.

"Pub­lic opin­ion is very frag­ile. It's not a set par­tic­u­lar view. If peo­ple be­lieve in you as a leader then you find that peo­ple's opin­ion moves to­wards you. To con­vince them it moves the oth­er way around. The point I will make again and again is if you do not en­sure prop­er lead­er­ship then you have a prob­lem on your hands. You have to be tough and say this is what we are go­ing to do."

He said there has been sub­stan­tial progress to­wards uni­ver­sal abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty.

"Re­venge alone is not jus­tice," he said, adding that jus­tice goes be­yond pun­ish­ment and seeks "a gen­uine recog­ni­tion by the wrong­do­ers of their wrong­do­ing."

Melin­da Jan­ki, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Jus­tice In­sti­tute, said the death penal­ty is not a de­ter­rent and up to 2011 there had been more than 1,600 mur­ders in Bar­ba­dos, the Ba­hamas, Guyana, T&T and Ja­maica.

Raphael Trot­man, Guyana's Min­is­ter of Gov­er­nance, weigh­ing in on the mat­ter, said: "Whether we are pre­pared to agree and ac­cept it or not, the in­con­tro­vert­ible and in­con­ve­nient truth is that one per­son's jus­tice can be an­oth­er's in­jus­tice. One per­son's way of jus­tice can be en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent from the oth­er's. How do we de­cide, and who gets to de­cide what jus­tice is and how it should be ad­min­is­tered?"

?EU's rec­om­men­da­tions

�2 For­malise an un­of­fi­cial mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty in Caribbean coun­tries that re­tain cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment

�2 Re­spect in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al hu­man rights laws and stan­dards re­lat­ing to the death penal­ty

�2 Have con­struc­tive di­a­logue with gov­ern­ments in the Caribbean to abol­ish the death penal­ty

�2 Strength­en jus­tice sys­tem struc­tures to en­sure vic­tims are sup­port­ed and there is ad­e­quate le­gal as­sis­tance for vul­ner­a­ble sec­tions of so­ci­ety

�2 Ad­vance hu­man rights ed­u­ca­tion as part of the cur­ricu­lum for cit­i­zen­ship stud­ies.