Judge stops hangings

TWO CONVICTED killers will not be hanged in Barbados this morning. The  High Court has granted them a reprieve... at least until September 29. Death warrants were read to Lennox Ricardo Boyce and Jeffrey Joseph last Thursday. They were due to be executed this morning. The warrants were read by Chief Marshal John Trotman at the island’s prison. This was the second time that the hangings were stayed. In June 2002, Boyce and Joseph had death warrants read to them. On an application to the High Court then, a judge blocked the hangings as the condemned men pursued constitutional motions. On Friday, Justice Carlisle Payne, presiding in the Bridgetown High Court, heard an application for a stay of execution until the court determines whether the two men had a case for a breach of their constitutional rights.

Payne granted a stay of execution and adjourned further hearing to September 29. Boyce and Joseph were among four Caribbean death row prisoners who went before the London-based Judicial Commit-tee of the Privy Council, which in a 5-4 majority judgment ruled that the mandatory death penalty was lawful and constitutional. Jamaican Lambert Watson and Trinidadian  Charles Matthew were the others who appealed on the issue of sentence since the same Privy Council had ruled in November 2003 that the mandatory death sentence was unlawful. In the July 7 ruling, the Law Lords said it was constitutional for murderers who had exhausted all legal avenues to be hanged. While the Law Lords recommended that all death row prisoners in Trinidad should have their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, no such recommendation was made for the prisoners in Barbados. That opened the way for Boyce, 28, and Joseph, 29, both of  Mile-And-A-Quarter, St Peter, to be hanged for the beating death of Marquelle Hippolyte, 22, on April 15, 1999.

They were found guilty and sentenced to death on February 2, 2001. Two others involved in the beating pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 12 years each. The local Court of Appeal turned down all four men’s appeals against conviction and sentence on March 27, 2002. During their court appearance on Friday, attorneys for the condemned men argued that if  they were executed it would deprive them of their right to life, liberty and the security of their person; that they had a right to be heard by the Mercy Committee and to have their matter heard by the Inter-American Human Rights Committee. Attorneys Adrian King and Wendy Maraj appeared for Joseph, while Boyce was represented by Andrew Pilgrim, Peta Gay Lee Brace and Lisa Gaskin.