82 killers cheat hangman... for now

Justice Ian Benjamin, presiding in the Port-of-Spain High Court, made the order after attorneys for the State gave no undertaking that the death sentence would not be carried out on the 78 other condemned men who were not part to a constitutional motion filed yesterday.

Convicted killers Andrew Dottin, Mark Teeluck, Ramsingh Jairam and Kelvin Dial, filed a constitutional motion against Commissioner of Prisons John Rougier, Registrar of the Supreme Court Evelyn Peterson, and the Attorney General after they were informed on Friday that the Advisory Committee on the Power of Pardon was planning to meet yesterday to discuss their matters.

A team of lawyers represented the four men — Douglas Mendes SC, Reginald Armour SC, Gregory Delzin, Ian Stuart Brook, and Margaret Rose. State attorneys Brandon Primus, Kavita Jodhan, and Josefina Baptiste appeared for the Commissioner of Prisons and the Attorney General.

When the matter was called at 1.40 pm, Armour told the court that a letter was sent to the Minister of National Security on Sunday informing him that it would be a cruel punishment to execute anyone who had been sentenced to death prior to July 7, 2004, the date on which the Privy Council ordered the death sentence on Charles Matthew to be commuted to life imprisonment.

According to Armour, that judgment stated that all persons awaiting sentence of death on Death Row must benefit from the decision in the Matthew case. As a result, he said the meeting of the Advisory Committee to consider the four applicants was an exercise in futility.

Primus said Gilbert Petersen SC was retained in the matter to represent the State. He asked for an adjournment to later this week to deal with this matter. He said a letter was sent to the four applicants an hour before the hearing, stating that the meeting of the Advisory Committee had been cancelled to a later date. Armour said in light of the request for an adjournment, he wanted an undertaking from the State that his clients would not be executed pending the hearing of the matter. He said the deliberations of the Advisory Committee were not relevant in light of the Matthew decision. He said his clients have a constitutional right to the commutation of the death sentence based on the 2004 judgment.

Armour said there was a letter dated January 12, 2005, in which the State’s English solicitor Charles Russell stated that the Government had accepted the decision in the Matthew case, inclusive of the paragraph in which the Law Lords said that all persons on Death Row who had been sentenced to death prior to July 7, 2004, were entitled to identical treatment to that meted out to Matthew.

"We feel that if something is not done, there can be another (Glenn) Ashby situation. We were reminded recently in the Pitman case, where the Advisory Committee did not even meet. One error can be made where someone can say we were speaking only about the four persons. I don’t want what happened in Ashby to happen here. I was on my legs in the Court of Appeal when Mr Ashby was hanged."

Armour wanted the court to say that it would be unconstitutional to execute any of the 82 men on Death Row. "If there is no undertaking from the State, we are asking you for a conservatory order to do so. We would not wish to come back to you to show that between the cup and the lip, someone was executed on Death Row."

Primus said the State did not plan to just execute people. This, he said, applied to the four applicants. He said he had no instructions with respect to the other 78 persons. He gave no undertaking that these people would not be executed.

Baptiste said she had no indication that the Advisory Committee was meeting to decide on the fate of other Death Row inmates.

In light of the submissions, Benjamin granted the conservatory order prohibiting the execution of any of the 82 Death Row inmates.