Sorry, Mr Volney

WHEN will the issue of capital punishment in our country be satisfactorily resolved? We now have the farce of judges sentencing convicted murderers to hang but the State seems either reluctant or impotent to remove the barriers which the Law Lords of the Privy Council have placed in the way of carrying out these executions. This ridiculous situation was again highlighted last Friday when Justice Herbert Volney, presiding in the San Fernando First Criminal Assizes, hoped the two men found guilty of murder before him would in fact be hanged because of the "sheer cruelty" with which their victim met his death.

The two young men, Kamal Pooran and Ramzan Asgarali, were found guilty of murdering 62-year-old Rio Claro taxi driver Surujbally "Billy" Mohan whose half-naked body was found hog-tied to a cocoa tree in the Rio Claro forest. He had been strangled. Judge Volney told the convicted men: "Before I impose the mandatory death sentence upon you, I want to express my hope that those who are responsible for carrying out the execution ordered by the Court will take steps to ensure that, having regard to the facts exposed in this trial, of the sheer cruelty of the death of the victim, that the death sentence is in fact carried out on both of you." At a time when violent crime and cold-blooded murder have become a major concern in TT, we feel sure that a majority of our citizens will fully agree with the feeling and sentiments expressed by Justice Volney, but the embarrassing reality is that the State's hands are tied with respect to executing the sentence of the Court and the Government has apparently settled for that status quo. The latest shackle imposed by the Law Lords is their 2000 ruling in a Jamaican case which gives convicted murderers the right to be heard by the Mercy Committee and, in the event of an adverse decision, they are entitled to take a motion for judicial review right up to the Privy Council. In effect, the Law Lords have rewritten our country's constitution by imposing a quasi-judicial function on the Mercy Committee to which convicted killers can now bring attorneys to argue their cases.

In our view, this is totally ridiculous but it is clearly another stratagem by the Law Lords to frustrate the conduct of capital punishment in TT and other countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean. Where previously the Mercy Committee sat quietly and considered whether there were any circumstances in each case that warranted mercy, they must now go through a kind of second trial with their decision susceptible to judicial review which can eventually reach the Law Lords themselves. The length of time that this process could consume would, of course, help to push the date of execution beyond the five-year deadline imposed by the Privy Council itself in the infamous Pratt and Morgan case. So convicted murderers now have this Mercy Committee hearing to add to all the other time consuming strategies, including the filing of constitutional motions, they can use to take advantage of the Pratt and Morgan ruling. Still, the fact is that under the UNC government, with Mr Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj as Attorney General, the State was able to carry out the death sentence imposed on Dole Chadee and eight of his henchmen for the murder of the Baboolal family. All the appeals, the constitutional motions, the petitions to human rights bodies brought by the convicted men were concluded within the space of three years. It was clear that the former AG was not content to allow the abolitionist Law Lords to frustrate the order of our courts and had even devised an amendment of our constitution that would offset all the impediments and constraints they had imposed. Under a PNM Government the situation now seems sadly different. Sorry, Mr Volney.