Cabinet moves to nullify Pratt and Morgan
Published:Thursday | September 2, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter
The Cabinet has approved amendments to the proposed Charter of Rights to reverse the effects of the Privy Council's ruling in the Pratt and Morgan case.
Details of the changes have not yet been made public but they are designed to nullify the 1993 Privy Council ruling that held that persons could not be executed if they remained on death row for more than five years.
Yesterday, Information Minister Daryl Vaz announced that Cabinet had approved the changes and these would be presented to Parliament shortly.
But Vaz made it clear that the amendment will target the Pratt and Morgan ruling.
"The amendment is to ensure that the conditions of prisons in which inmates are detained pending the execution of death sentences are not held to be inconsistent with, or in contravention of, the protection against inhumane or degrading punishment or other treatment," Vaz told journalists.
This came months after A.J. Nicholson, the opposition spokesman on justice, had told The Gleaner that the Charter of Rights was yet to be voted on because of issues regarding the death penalty.
According to Nicholson, a bill which would avoid the Pratt and Morgan ruling and allow for the retention of the death penalty would have to be tabled in Parliament before the vote on the Charter of Rights could be taken.
He pointed to Barbados, which had passed legislation to nullify the Pratt and Morgan ruling.
"If you are going to go the Barbados route, you have to make either some changes to the charter or you bring a separate bill which would do away with the five-year stricture, because the Parliament voted that we should retain the death penalty," Nicholson said.
Amending the proposed Charter
With the announcement from Vaz yesterday, it appears that the Government is going the route of amending the proposed charter.
The Charter of Rights represents an attempt by the Government to replace Chapter Three of the Constitution - fundamental rights and freedoms.
It places on the State an obligation to promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and freedoms for all persons in Jamaica.
It also affords protection to the rights and freedoms of persons, as set out in those provisions.
The Charter of Rights proposes that Parliament shall pass no law and establish no organ of the state which abrogates, abridges or infringes the fundamental rights of citizens.
The legislation has been sitting on the table of the House of Representatives since last November.
Earl Pratt and Ivan Morgan had appealed to the Privy Council after being sentenced to death for a 1977 murder.
The Privy Council sided with the two men and ruled that in any case where the execution is to take place more than five years after sentencing there would be strong grounds for believing that the delay is such as to constitute "inhumane or degrading punishment or other treatment".
This has often been cited as one of the reasons no death sentence has been implemented in Jamaica since 1988.
In 2007, Pratt was released after serving 30 years in prison. Morgan died in prison of natural causes in 1996.