Waiting on the Law Lords

NEXT MARCH, three Caribbean states, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica will make legal history in the Commonwealth when they seek jointly to reverse the recent decision of the Privy Council cancelling the mandatory death sentence. For the first time in its long history, the Privy Council will comprise nine sitting judges who will adjudicate on three murder appeals which will be defended by eminent attorneys engaged by the three Caricom states.

To begin with, we must acknowledge the surprising decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in conceding to hear the joint representations, following a meeting with Barbados Attorney General Mia Mottley. We are not aware of the nature of Mottley’s discussions with the British Law Lords nor can we give the reason for their decision to hear joint petitions aimed at reversing the ruling they had delivered a month ago, albeit as a 3-2 majority judgment. However, according to legal opinion consulted by Newsday, the four-day hearing scheduled for next March will be unprecedented in a number of ways, for example in the joint action of the defendants, in the nature of their petitions, in the size of the tribunal and perhaps in the battery of emiment attorneys who will argue the case for both sides.

Whether or not we played a part in the Privy Council’s concession we have no idea, but this newspaper has been strong in its condemnation of the Law Lords’ decision to throw out the mandatory death penalty for convicted murderers which has been on our statute books since time immemorial. We rejected their contention that it breached the principle of the separation of powers and we agreed fully with the dissenting minority view that it was quite proper for the country’s legislature to prescribe the sentence to be imposed on any convicted offender. In addition, we found it offensive for the Law Lords sitting in London to be again rewriting our laws to suit their abolitionist inclinations. We considered this “an affront to our sovereignty; since changing or making new laws to regulate our affairs must be our exclusive business, not that of the British Privy Councillors.” But this is what these foreign judges have been doing since the notorious Pratt and Morgan case some ten years ago, rewriting our common law to reflect their own stand on the death penalty.

So we must now be pleased that the PC have apparently had second thoughts on the judgment they delivered last month in the action brought by convicted killer Balkissoon Roodal, declaring that the mandatory death penalty was unconstitutional and placing the sentencing of convicted murderers squarely on the shoulders of the trial judge. Hopefully, however, all the problems we have been having with the Privy Council will soon be over with the establishment of the Caribbean Court of Justice which will become the final Court of Appeal for the Commonwealth Caribbean. In that respect, the CCJ will replace the Privy Council whose days, in any event, seems to be numbered. Among its functions, the CCJ will play a key role in shaping the region’s own jurisprudence as befits our status as independent nations. But here again, progress in this direction is likely to be stymied by the non-cooperation of the UNC opposition which has placed discussions on constitutional reform as a first priority before agreeing to support any measure in parliament requiring a special majority. It seems sad that after finally severing our colonial connection with the Privy Council we may now have to face problems we are creating for ourselves as features of our sovereign democracy.