Senator doubtful about death penalty
Published:Tuesday | April 5, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter
OPPOSITION SENATOR A.J. Nicholson has expressed doubt that condemned persons will ever be executed in Jamaica.
"I don't believe the death penalty is ever going to be carried out in Jamaica again, whether you remain with the Privy Council or the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ)," Nicholson said in the Senate last week.
"The judgments that I read from the CCJ, especially Boyce, tells me the way in which that court is thinking. They are doing the route of doing away with the death penalty ... that is the way the world is going anyway," he added.
The former attorney general who, in 2009, voted against the retention of the death penalty, told the Senate that he would not support an amendment to the Constitution which would make it easier to execute condemned persons.
Based on a landmark ruling by the Privy Council in the Pratt and Morgan case, a condemned man cannot be executed if his process of appeals lasts more than five years from the date of his sentencing.
five-year stricture
The constitutional amendment to which Nicholson referred, seeks to remove the five-year stricture, which would make it easier for the carrying out of capital punishment.
"I am not certain that this piece of legislation can withstand scrutiny before the privy council ... and since I am not certain, I can't vote for it either," Nicholson said.
Following conscience votes in both Houses of Parliament for the retention of the death penalty, legislators in the Lower House said it was necessary to navigate around the Pratt and Morgan ruling in the same way in which Barbados and Belize did.
"When Barbados and Belize passed this piece of legislation and changed their Constitution, they moved immediately from the Privy Council to the CCJ and it has turned out that the piece of legislation that they passed is really of no moment now, because the CCJ has ruled they are not going the Pratt and Morgan route," Nicholson said.
He told the Senate that the passage of the Charter of Rights conflicts with the death penalty.
"We should not be passing a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and at the same time passing a bill that has to do with the right to life," Nicholson said.
Meanwhile, government senator Marlene Malahoo Forte noted that the retention of the death penalty does not breach international law.