No freedom for Bernard Coard and others

THE Court of Appeal of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) yesterday stayed the possible release of Bernard Coard and others who had been convicted in 1986 of the murders of Grenada Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and members of his Cabinet. Justice Gordon, sitting in St Lucia, ruled in favour of the Grenada government and granted a stay of execution of the judgment handed down by Justice Kenneth Benjamin in the Grenada High Court on March 16. 

Justice Benjamin had ruled that the sentence of imprisonment on Coard and others for the remainder of their lives be quashed; that the prisoners be remanded in custody and be brought before a judge of the High Court within 42 days to be re-sentenced under conviction dated December 4, 1986;  and they be paid monetary compensation, to be assessed by a judge in chambers and paid to the convicted men by the State. The prisoners should have been brought before a High Court judge today to be re-sentenced with the possibility that they would have all been released because they had served more than 15 years which is considered a life sentence in Grenada.

The Government of Grenada had appealed this ruling. Last Wednesday, Justice Gordon presided over a telephonic hearing with attorneys on both sides. Trinidadian attorney Keith Scotland represented the applicants, while Rohan Phillip held for Karl Hudson-Phillips QC on behalf of the Grenada Government. Both Scotland and Phillip were in Grenada and in the historic telephonic link-up with the OECS judge, submissions were made in what was regarded as an urgent application for a stay of execution of the High Court ruling. Yesterday, Justice Gordon, presiding in St Lucia, gave judgment and granted a stay of the High Court’s ruling. The stay of execution means that the status quo will remain until the hearing of the appeal.

The appeal was then adjourned to May 4 in Grenada for a case management hearing. A date will then be set for a hearing before a full OECS Court of Appeal. Bernard Coard, Callitus Bernard, Lester Redhead, Christopher Stroude, Hudson Austin, Liam James, Leon Cornwall, John Ventour, Dave Bartholomew, Ewart Layne, Colville Mc Barnett, Selwyn Strachan, and Cecil Prime, were found guilty on December 4, 1986 and sentenced to death for the October 19, 1983 execution-style murders of Prime Minister Bishop and 13 other persons at Fort Rupert, St George’s.

In 1991, the then Governor General commuted the death sentences of the convicted men to life imprisonment for the rest of their natural lives. Attorney Scotland filed a constitutional motion on behalf of the 13 convicted prisoners, all of whom were part of Bishop’s People’s Revolutionary Army (PRG) which overthrew the then Government of Prime Minister Eric Gairy in 1979. Justice Benjamin ruled on March 16 that the decision of the then Governor General to commute the death sentences to life imprisonment was unconstitutional and in breach of the separation of powers.