June 28 — appeal date for Coard and others

ANOTHER  scene in  the  killing of  Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and members of his Cabinet in 1983 will be played out in the OECS Court of Appeal in St George’s, Grenada, on June 28. On that day, the Grenada government will seek to have the Court of Appeal overturn a High Court ruling of March 16 which declared that the death sentences imposed on 13 accused persons were unconstitutional and illegal. At a case management hearing in Grenada on Tuesday, Appeal Court Judge Michael Gordon laid down guidelines for the appeal which will be heard between June 28 and July 1. Grenadian attorney Cajeton Hood held for Trinidadian Keith Scotland on behalf of the convicted men, while Rohan Phillip represented Karl Hudson-Phillips QC for the Grenada government.

Justice Gordon ordered that all written submissions and affidavits be filed with the court by June 25. On March 16, Justice Kenneth ruled that the sentence of imprisonment on Coard and others for the remainder of their lives be quashed; that the prisoners be remanded in custody and be brought before a judge of the High Court within 42 days to be re-sentenced under conviction dated December 4, 1986;  and they be paid monetary compensation, to be assessed by a judge in chambers and paid to the convicted men by the State. The prisoners should have been brought before a High Court judge on April 27 to be re-sentenced with the possibility that they would have all been released because they had served more than 15 years which is considered a life sentence in Grenada.

But the government of Grenada appealed this ruling days before. On April 26, Justice Gordon, presiding in St Lucia, gave judgment and granted a stay of the High Court’s ruling. The stay of execution means that the status quo will remain until the hearing of the appeal. Bernard Coard, Callitus Bernard, Lester Redhead, Christopher Stroude, Hudson Austin, Liam James, Leon Cornwall, John Ventour, Dave Bartholomew, Ewart Layne, Colville Mc Barnett, Selwyn Strachan, and Cecil Prime, were found guilty on December 4, 1986 and sentenced to death for the October 19, 1983 execution-style murders of Prime Minister Bishop and 13 other persons at Fort Rupert, St George’s.

In 1991, the then Governor General Sir Paul Scoon commuted the death sentences of the convicted men to life imprisonment for the rest of their natural lives. Attorney Scotland filed a constitutional motion on behalf of the 13 convicted prisoners, all of whom were part of Bishop’s People’s Revolutionary Army (PRG) which overthrew the then Government of Prime Minister Eric Gairy in 1979. Justice Benjamin ruled on March 16 that the decision of the then Governor General to commute the death sentences to life imprisonment was unconstitutional and in breach of the separation of powers.