Happy, Law Lords?

WELL at least three members of the Privy Council should be very pleased that, thanks largely to their absurd ruling, two men convicted of  murder and sentenced to hang by a TT court were set free last week. It seems the Law Lords have chalked up another success in their long running and consistent campaign to impose their abolitionist views on Trinidad and Tobago and other Commonwealth Caribbean states. Beneficiaries of the Law Lords' unprecedented decision are Kizza Sealey and Marvin Headley who were found guilty of murdering Don Christopher Prescott in January 1999 but whose conviction was quashed by a 3-2 majority decision of the Privy Council on the single ground that their defence counsel had failed to put evidence of their "good character" to the jury.

As we stated in a previous editorial, we find this decision unbelievable. In the first place, it is unprecedented. In all the TT murder appeals heard before by the Privy Council this is the first time that such a point was argued. In the face of overwhelming evidence of the guilt of the two accused, we would have thought that the Law Lords would consider such a ground as vexatious and frivolous. We could hardly imagine that evidence of "good charactger" — which, by the way, could be cooked up by any accused person — would be sufficient to sway a jury confronted by the kind of evidence produced by the prosecution in this trial. In such circumstances, what really are the Law Lords saying? That evidence of the accused's "good character" in any murder —  or any  criminal case for that matter — could be sufficient to override or negate overwhelming evidence of their guilt? Indeed, is it their view that a person of "good character" cannot commit murder or a serious act of violence?

The inconsistency of the Privy Council in dealing with this appeal is troubling. On the one hand, they recognised that the case against the two accused "was a very strong one and that, from a reading of the transcript, the alibi evidence appeared unimpressive." On the other hand, they stated: "While it appears probable that the jury would have convicted, their Lordships are unable to conclude that the jury would inevitably have convicted" had the "good character" direction been given. This majority decision of the Privy Council, as we see it, can only be understood in the context of the determined effort of the British Law Lords, starting with Pratt and Morgan several years ago, to circumvent the process of our criminal justice system which requires the death penalty to be imposed on all convicted murderers. In the case of Sealey and Headley, they were convicted on February 29, 2000, before Justice Herbert Volney who duly sentenced them to hang. The TT Court of Appeal considered their case on March 20, 2001, and dismissed it.

Our experience of criminal trials tells us that accused persons are convicted on the weight of evidence brought against them and that defence counsel are entitled to submit evidence of their "good character" to the court as part of a plea in mitigation of sentence. The death penalty imposed on convicted murderers, of course, is not susceptible to such a plea. The prosecution's case against Sealey and Headley centred on the evidence of former Police Corporal Roland Holder who was an eye witness to the killing of Prescott on the morning of January 25, 1999, on Independence Square, Port-of-Spain. Holder told the court he saw "a commotion" among four men on the sidewalk and the two accused running away while blood flowed from bodyguard Prescott and his employer businessman James Chen. Holder said he recognised the two accused men who lived in his neighbourhood and whom he saw almost every day. However the former police officer refused to return to Trinidad from the United States to testify at the retrial which had to be held as a result of the Privy Council ruling. So the convicted men were freed and the Law Lords should be quite pleased.