‘Caribbean Court - a hanging court’

CHIEF JUSTICE Sat Sharma was outraged last night  at comments made in Australia on Monday by well-known British Queen’s Counsel Geoffrey Robertson that the proposed Caribbean Court of Justice was being established to make it easier to carry out the death penalty.

Sharma, who is in Australia attending the Commonwealth Law Conference, told Newsday that the Chief Justices of Barbados and Guyana were also very upset at the remarks made by Robertson at a function at an Australian Club. Contacted in Melbourne last night, CJ Sharma said the Chief Justices of these three Caribbean islands plan to lodge a formal complaint on their return from the conference later this month. Sharma endorsed the comments made by his Barbados counterpart Sir David Simmons who spoke to the Australian media, who was quoted in the Australian daily newspaper, The Age.

Sir David said Robertson’s comments were “offensive, cheap and an affront to those involved in setting up the court.” He said suggestions that the court had been set up to accelerate hangings would mean only judges who favoured the death penalty would be employed. Caribbean countries have found it extremely difficult to carry out the death penalty following the decision of the Privy Council in the Pratt and Morgan decision in 1993. Although Trinidad and Tobago carried out 10 hangings in 1999, other countries have been unable to do likewise. Robertson is well-known in Trinidad, having represented the Jamaat Al Muslimeen in the amnesty case. He also successfully represented suspended High Court Judge Richard Crane in the Privy Council, and was the lead attorney in the Commission of Inquiry into the Judiciary in Trinidad and Tobago.

Speaking at the function in Melbourne on Monday, Robertson cited a report from an English paper, which said that one of the motives behind the establishment of the new court was to make it easier to impose the death penalty. “This is a matter that has been canvassed in the press and it is a matter that I mentioned on the basis that if it were the case, then it would hardly be a matter of rejoicing, notwithstanding the importance of the Caribbean developing the law itself,” Robertson added. He pointed out that the Caribbean, like many other jurisdictions, had benefited from having an external human rights court, with the Privy Council acting for the Caribbean like the European Court did for the United Kingdom. When told that the Caribbean Chief Justices were upset at his remarks, Robertson said he based his remarks on what he had read in the Times Law Supplement. He was not making any allegations.

The Barbados Chief Justice said the new court, still to come on stream, was being set up as part of the development of a single market and economy for the Commonwealth states in the Caribbean. The court, he added, would deal with civil and criminal cases and would be the final court of appeal for the relevant states, effectively replacing the Privy Council in England. In a paper delivered yesterday at the conference, the Barbados CJ said it was an unworthy distortion of history and reality to claim the court was being established to accelerate hangings in the region. He said some opponents have made such suggestions, but the death penalty exists in the laws of all the Commonwealth Caribbean states and the people of the region have indicated no desire for its abolition.