Judge steps down from hearing killers’ motion

THE JUDGE who sentenced two Barbados killers to death three years ago was forced to step down from hearing their constitutional motion in which they are trying to stop their execution. Death warrants were read on September 15 to Lennox Ricardo Boyce and Jeffrey Joseph for their execution on September 20, but a judge granted a stay of execution. The condemned men filed a constitutional motion seeking a permanent stay of the hangings. On Wednesday, Mr Justice Carlisle Payne, the judge assigned to hear the constitutional motion, acceded to the request of the men’s lawyers that he, having tried the original case and sentenced the men to hang after they were convicted, should transfer the matter to another court. According to Justice Payne, ‘it is unfortunate that this can’t be heard this morning ... I had alerted my colleagues that one of them would have to hear it today. I anticipated it would be heard today,” Justice Payne said before adjourning the motion to October 11.

The motion argued that to execute the men while they had outstanding hearings before the Mercy Committee and Inter-American Human Rights Committee would be to deprive them of their right to life, liberty and the security of their person guaranteed in the Constitution. Queen’s Counsel Alair Shepherd, who led the arguments on Wednesday, told Justice Payne that he, as the trial judge, had no other choice but to impose the death penalty and later write a report to the Mercy Committee on the trial. Since the death penalty was mandatory, Shepherd said, the judge would not have been privileged to hear any mitigation and so his report would not contain any mitigating circumstances.

Shepherd said it would be more appropriate for another judge, not having made any such report, to hear the motion. He said lawyers had filed documents on Monday but only served the Crown on Wednesday morning, and therefore the Crown might not be prepared to respond to the requested amendment. Deputy Solicitor-General Jennifer Edwards, who appeared with Principal Crown Counsel Elson Gaskin and Dennis Hanoman-Singh, did not object to the applications, saying they would need time to study the documents. In February 2001, Boyce, 28, and Joseph, 29, both of  Mile-and-a-Quarter, were convicted for the April 15, 1999 beating death of Marquelle Hippolyte, 22, of 3rd Avenue, Lower Carlton, St James. Two others, Rodney Ricardo Murray, 25, of Ashton Hall, and Romaine Curtis Benn, 26, of  Mile-and-a-Quarter, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were jailed for 12 years.