KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With re­newed calls for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to be en­forced, which would see the re­sump­tion of hang­ings, a con­sti­tu­tion­al at­tor­ney and a hu­man rights ad­vo­cate say it will have ze­ro im­pact on de­ter­ring crime.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al at­tor­ney Dou­glas Mendes, SC, said yes­ter­day it is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­ed that there is no ev­i­dence show­ing the death penal­ty de­ters mur­ders. He gave sev­er­al ex­am­ples, in­clud­ing com­par­isons in the USA be­tween states with and with­out the death penal­ty.

“Un­less Trinidad is spe­cial in some way, which I can­not see it is, it is un­like­ly that the re­sump­tion of hang­ings will re­sult in a re­duced mur­der rate. As far as our sta­tis­tics in­di­cate, where our prob­lem lies is not in car­ry­ing out the death penal­ty or not. It lies with catch­ing peo­ple who are com­mit­ting mur­ders and then con­vict­ing them with­in a rea­son­ably short pe­ri­od,” Mendes said.

He sug­gest­ed that an as­sur­ance of po­lice catch­ing crim­i­nals, try­ing and get­ting a con­vic­tion in a short time would be one of the surest ways to de­ter any crime.

“If I know I can com­mit a crime and get away with it, then I think the temp­ta­tion to com­mit a crime will be much greater. If, on the oth­er hand, I can see that if you com­mit a crime, you get caught and you face the con­se­quences with­in a short pe­ri­od, the nat­ur­al hu­man re­sponse would be to think twice.”

Al­so con­tact­ed, for­mer Greater Caribbean for Life chair Leela Ramdeen said the death penal­ty is cru­el, in­hu­mane and an in­ef­fec­tive form of pun­ish­ment, which has no place in a civilised so­ci­ety. She said over 145 coun­tries have abol­ished the death penal­ty in prac­tice or law. She al­so not­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s com­ments dur­ing the Cari­com Crime Sym­po­sium last April that he did not see the death penal­ty as a de­ter­rent but as pun­ish­ment.

“Gov­ern­ments should not be look­ing for re­venge. A gov­ern­ment should be look­ing at trans­for­ma­tive jus­tice. That is what Trinidad needs to be look­ing at,” Ramdeen said.

“There is no ev­i­dence that the death penal­ty has any unique de­ter­rent ef­fect on se­ri­ous crime. Re­search, as we know, re­veals that it needs the cer­tain­ty of be­ing caught, ar­rest­ed and con­vict­ed with­in a rea­son­able time to act as a de­ter­rent.”

She said giv­en the time it takes to con­clude mur­der tri­als, there was al­so no way the State could re­sume hang­ings, as the Privy Coun­cil’s 1993 Pratt and Mor­gan rul­ing es­tab­lished five years for car­ry­ing out ex­e­cu­tions.

The last time T&T saw the death penal­ty was on Ju­ly 28 1999, when the State ex­e­cut­ed An­tho­ny Brig­gs for the Au­gust 1992 mur­der of taxi dri­ver Siew­dath Ramkissoon.

The most talked about ex­e­cu­tions oc­curred be­tween June 4-7, 1999, with the hang­ings of no­to­ri­ous drug king­pin Dole Chadee and his gang mem­bers Joey Rami­ah, Ramkhelawan Singh, Clive Thomas, Robin Gopaul, Rus­sel Sanker­al­li, Joel Rami­ah, Steve Ever­s­ley and Bag­wan­deen Singh. The court con­vict­ed them of the 1994 mur­ders of Hamil­ton Ba­boolal, his moth­er Rook­min, sis­ter Mon­i­ca and fa­ther Deo. The mur­der toll was 93 that year, a 20-year low.

The top­ic of re­sum­ing hang­ings as a means of de­ter­ring crime was again raised on Mon­day dur­ing the UNC’s An­ti-crime Town Hall Meet­ing in St Joseph.

But crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day said the death penal­ty will not hold firm, es­pe­cial­ly when the chances of a mur­der­er get­ting caught are slim. The mur­der de­tec­tion rate was 13.5 per cent in 2023, and Seep­er­sad said the con­vic­tion rate was less than 2 per cent.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, had claimed there was a calm in the coun­try fol­low­ing the ex­e­cu­tions of Dole Chadee and his gang. How­ev­er, Seep­er­sad said re­search shows the death penal­ty does not de­ter crime. He added that in the US, the le­gal fees are even high­er than main­tain­ing a life in prison, as the pros­e­cu­tion has to go through var­i­ous lev­els of ap­peals. From an eth­i­cal stand­point, he ques­tioned whether it rights the mur­der­er’s wrongs and whether so­ci­ety has the right to take a life.