Gail Alexan­der

On­ly for the most ex­treme cas­es.That's part of Gov­ern­ment's con­tin­u­ing stance on the death penal­ty, which re­mains on T&T law books and which cur­rent­ly ap­plies to 30 per­sons on Death Row–in­clud­ing one fe­male.Speak­ing on the eve of this week's in­ter­na­tion­al An­ti-Death Penal­ty Con­gress in Spain, where the glob­al abo­li­tion­ist move­ment will cau­cus, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said, "This is an emo­tion­al po­lit­i­cal is­sue with pow­er­ful ar­gu­ments on both sides."There may be doubt whether it is a po­tent and ef­fec­tive de­ter­rent, but it is dif­fi­cult to ar­gue with vic­tims who rest their case on the prin­ci­ple of ret­ri­bu­tion. In the fi­nal analy­sis, it is a mat­ter that should be de­cid­ed by the peo­ple."

Glob­al fo­cus will fall on the is­sue of the death penal­ty in the Caribbean when the fifth an­nu­al An­ti-Death Penal­ty Con­gress takes place in Madrid, Spain, from to­mor­row to Sat­ur­day.The event has been or­gan­ised an­nu­al­ly since 2001 by the En­sem­ble Con­tre la Peine du Mort (To­geth­er Against the Death Penal­ty) and the World Coali­tion Against the Death Penal­ty.It is be­ing held this year on in­vi­ta­tion of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment with sup­port from the French, Nor­we­gian and Swiss gov­ern­ments.The sum­mit, ex­pect­ed to be at­tend­ed by 1,500 peo­ple from 90 coun­tries, unites mem­bers of in­ter­na­tion­al civ­il so­ci­ety, politi­cians and le­gal ex­perts to height­en the glob­al lob­by for the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty.

Part of the gath­er­ing in­volves 200 par­tic­i­pants from coun­tries such as T&T and oth­ers re­gion­al­ly,, which still re­tain the death penal­ty.Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al es­ti­mates 13 of the 58 states that re­tain the death penal­ty are in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.Apart from spe­cial fo­cus on the Arab and African re­gions in this year's pro­gramme, the con­fer­ence's first day ac­tiv­i­ties fea­ture a ses­sion on the death penal­ty in the Caribbean re­gion.Fea­ture speak­ers in­clude T&T's Leela Ramdeen, who will present a pa­per rep­re­sent­ing the Greater Caribbean for Life group. This in­volves sev­en peo­ple from T&T, Be­lize, Guatemala, Ja­maica, Puer­to Ri­co and St Vin­cent & the Grenadines.

While deeply sym­pa­this­ing with the vic­tims of vi­o­lent crime, the group doesn't be­lieve the death penal­ty makes so­ci­eties safer.Mem­bers, how­ev­er, be­lieve abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in T&T and the Caribbean will re­quire a mul­ti-faceted ap­proach that ad­dress­es is­sues in­clud­ing im­prov­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice and ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice sys­tems, tack­ling crime and vi­o­lence, ad­dress­ing vic­tims' rights, en­hanc­ing ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems 1` and chang­ing the minds of peo­ple.As for T&T's posi­ton on the death penal­ty is­sue, Ram­lo­gan told the T&T Guardian: "There is no doubt the death penal­ty can be a de­ter­rent, as it has an ef­fect on the psy­che of the crim­i­nal, but I'm aware that there's a rag­ing aca­d­e­m­ic de­bate on this is­sue."Vic­tims and sup­port­ers ar­gue it has noth­ing to do with the con­cept of de­ter­rence, be­cause it has to do with ret­ri­bu­tion and the en­force­ment of the law. Abo­li­tion­ists ar­gue that it is cru­el and in­hu­mane, is not an ef­fec­tive de­ter­rent and 'an eye for an eye' leaves the whole world blind."

Ram­lo­gan added, "As the du­ly-elect­ed gov­ern­ment, we're sworn to up­hold and en­force the laws of this land and there­fore du­ty bound to fa­cil­i­tate and ad­vance its im­ple­men­ta­tion as long as it re­mains on the books."On the sta­tus of the Gov­ern­ment's moves to try and im­ple­ment the law re­gard­ing hang­ings fol­low­ing its 2012 plan for leg­is­la­tion to cat­e­gorise mur­ders, Ram­lo­gan said: "The Gov­ern­ment did in­tro­duce a bill to cat­e­gorise mur­ders and in­tro­duce some mea­sure of flex­i­bil­i­ty and dis­cre­tion so that the death penal­ty would not be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly im­posed in every case. We were in­flu­enced in this re­gard by the Amer­i­can ju­rispru­dence which dis­tin­guish­es mur­ders ac­cord­ing to the par­tic­u­lar facts and cir­cum­stances in which the mur­der oc­curred (hence, for ex­am­ple, mur­der in the first, sec­ond and third de­gree)."Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this bill was not passed be­cause the Op­po­si­tion vot­ed against it. The Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, has no dif­fi­cul­ty with the propo­si­tion that the death penal­ty should be dis­cre­tionary. We are, how­ev­er, equal­ly com­mit­ted and du­ty-bound to im­ple­ment the law as it present­ly stands."

On whether the mat­ter would be tak­en fur­ther, the AG said soon af­ter the de­bate, he wrote Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley sev­er­al let­ters "in the hope that we can have some mean­ing­ful di­a­logue on this is­sue.""Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there was no re­sponse. The Op­po­si­tion has man­aged to main­tain the con­tra­dic­to­ry po­si­tion that it sup­ports the death penal­ty but can­not sup­port or pro­pose any leg­is­la­tion to fa­cil­i­tate its im­ple­men­ta­tion," Ram­lo­gan said.Since some quar­ters be­lieve T&T, like oth­er re­gion­al states, may soon have to take the death penal­ty off its books, where does T&T stand in this sce­nario?Ram­lo­gan said, "I be­lieve the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion favours the re­ten­tion of the death penal­ty. The mur­der rate is high and there are many who be­lieve in the prin­ci­ples of re­ten­tion and de­ter­rence."The Gov­ern­ment is in favour of cat­e­goris­ing mur­ders so that the death penal­ty can be re­served for the most ex­treme cas­es with the most bru­tal of heinous mur­ders. The Op­po­si­tion ob­ject­ed to this and we were forced to re­move it from the pro­posed amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion. This, how­ev­er, re­mains the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion."

Con­sid­er­ing the 37 per cent re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crime (from 2012 to 2013 fig­ures), asked whether Gov­ern­ment still sees the death penal­ty as ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary, Ram­lo­gan said, "The death penal­ty does not ap­ply to most se­ri­ous crimes. It does, how­ev­er, ap­ply to mur­der and the mur­der rate is still high even though it is on the de­cline."With some polls on T&T show­ing a large part of the pop­u­la­tion favour­ing hang­ing, the AG was asked whether this can be ex­pect­ed be­fore the end of the term."We can­not im­ple­ment the death penal­ty with­out an amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion. This re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment for which Op­po­si­tion sup­port is nec­es­sary," he said."In Ja­maica the op­po­si­tion re­cent­ly joined forces with the gov­ern­ment to vote to amend the Ja­maica con­sti­tu­tion to fa­cil­i­tate the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty. We can on­ly live in hope."With the sit­u­a­tion in lim­bo, the AG added, "The death penal­ty, part of our law, is what we in­her­it­ed from our colo­nial mas­ters. The Privy Coun­cil has ruled this is a valid part of T&T's bind­ing laws."Both the Op­po­si­tion and Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship have pub­licly de­clared their com­mit­ment to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty in re­sponse to the over­whelm­ing pub­lic sup­port and de­mand for it."The AG added, "There is no uni­ver­sal con­sen­sus on the moral­i­ty or cor­rect­ness of the death penal­ty. It forms part of the laws and is in fact im­ple­ment­ed in many coun­tries, in­clud­ing cer­tain states in the USA, Sin­ga­pore and Chi­na."

Op­po­si­tion PNM says....

Op­po­si­tion PNM deputy leader Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald said the par­ty stands by its po­si­tion in favour of the death penal­ty, but al­so main­tains its po­si­tion against Gov­ern­ment's re­cent leg­is­la­tion on it.PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds added, "The death penal­ty is­sue is to me more of an in­tel­lec­tu­al ex­er­cise more than emo­tion­al."He said mat­ters were of­ten over­turned at Privy Coun­cil lev­el since that ju­ris­dic­tion had abol­ished the death penal­ty."They en­gage ar­gu­ments in a rig­or­ous ex­er­cise so it be­comes a mat­ter of their le­gal wit against that of Caribbean at­tor­neys," he added.

"So we have to be very in­tel­lec­tu­al in our ap­proach on this. When the Gov­ern­ment came with the last piece of leg­is­la­tion we ex­am­ined it thor­ough­ly and found where the Privy Coun­cil would have walked right over the stip­u­la­tions of the bill."Hinds added, "We must now await what new mea­sures Gov­ern­ment will present, then see whether that can meet Privy Coun­cil re­sis­tance."

THE MADRID MAN­DATE

CON­GRESS TOP­ICS: in­clude abo­li­tion and al­ter­na­tive sen­tences in the world, ju­ve­niles and the death penal­ty in the world, drug traf­fick­ing and the death penal­ty, le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es glob­al­ly, the Mid­dle East, Iran, African and Asian re­gions and the death penal­ty, ter­ror­ism and abo­li­tion, the state of abo­li­tion in the USA, Eu­rope and fu­ture strate­gies, death penal­ty and tor­ture, abo­li­tion­ist strate­gies.

PO­LIT­I­CAL FIG­URES EX­PECT­ED: Pres­i­dent of Benin, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ters of Spain, France, Swiss Con­fed­er­a­tion, Nor­way, Mau­ri­ta­nia, deputy prime min­is­ters of Lux­em­bourg and Bel­gium, UN high com­mis­sion­er for hu­man rights, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Coun­cil of Eu­rope, pres­i­dent of the Com­mis­sion of Hu­man Rights of the Iraq Par­lia­ment, pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mis­sion Against the Death Penal­ty, and the for­mer French Jus­tice min­is­ter, who au­thored the French law that abol­ished France's death penal­ty.

NO­BEL PEACE PRIZE LAU­RE­ATES: North­ern Ire­land peace ac­tivist Mairead Maguire, for­mer Iran­ian judge and women's/hu­man rights ac­tivist, Shirin Eba­di, for­mer East Tim­or pres­i­dent Jose Ramos Hor­ta.

TES­TI­MONIES FROM: for­mer death row pris­on­ers of Iran, Spain, Mo­roc­co, Ugan­da, Tai­wan, par­ents, spous­es of death row pris­on­ers and the for­mer death row war­den of the US state of Vir­ginia.