The attention being given to the eleven murders and other violent crimes that have taken place already for the year has thrust the capital punishment debate back into the spotlight, with renewed focus being placed on the 31 inmates languishing on death row at Her Majesty’s Prison in Fox Hill.
Twelve of these condemned men have appealed to the Privy Council in Great Britain – the region’s highest Court of Appeal. But 10 of those appeals have been dismissed.
But there is still hope for those inmates as they can also file appeals to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy as a last ditch effort.
With the list of murders getting longer, proponents and opponents of the death penalty continue to be locked in serious debate, this as the international campaign for the abolition of capital punishment gains momentum.
But as long as capital punishment remains the law of the land, Bahamas Christian Council President Bishop Samuel Greene said the law should be upheld, “as laid out in the books.”
“Just as the law must be applied to every other offense, it must be applied in the case of persons who committed murder and went through due process of the law,” he said. “Once this is done, and the court upholds your guilty plea, then the punishment should follow,” Bishop Greene said. “And it should not be for a decade, but in hot pursuit – immediately after a convict has used up all his appeals. So, if the court says you should be hung by the neck, then so be it.”
Proponents for capital punishment have some heavy-hitters in their corner.
Police Commissioner Paul Farquharson and Deputy Commissioner John Rolle recently called for the resumption of hangings, insisting that executions are a key deterrent to crime.
Both Prime Minister Perry Christie and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Security Cynthia Pratt have said they support the death penalty.
Minister Pratt, who is facing increasing pressures to implement an aggressive anti-crime fighting strategy, has also said that capital punishment is no deterrent to crime.
Mr. Christie, meanwhile, has expressed his concerns that constitutional loopholes are preventing the law from being carried out.
He said the country has to sort out the question of capital punishment once and for all.
“Here in The Bahamas, it is still the law and we don’t have the right to allow our own indifference to act in a timely fashion to cause the delays in the processing of criminal cases where you automatically – because it takes more than five years to go through the entire gamut of appeals – reach the point where it is unconstitutional because it’s cruel and inhumane punishment,” he told the Bahama Journal.
While a number of constitutional challenges over the years have halted hangings in The Bahamas – the country executed its first convict in 12 years in 1996.
The constitutional question arises after five years after an inmate is convicted, if he is still on death row after that period.
Within 21 days after being convicted, a death row inmate can appeal his case, but Deputy Director of Public Prosecution Cheryl Bethel, pointed out that some of these inmates opt instead to drag out the process of appeal.
Mrs. Bethel said while five years may sound like a very long time, “death row inmates are in no rush to have their sentences carried out.”
“This explains why many of them often opt to challenge and exhaust the country’s judicial process, simply to escape death,” she said.
After an inmate files an appeal, the Court of Appeal then decides whether to accept this petition. If the appeal is accepted, a judge can order a retrial. If that petition is dismissed, however, the next option is to petition the Privy Council, but there is no set time limit to file an appeal.
Mrs. Bethel explained that the Attorney General refers these cases to the Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy in an attempt to speed up the process. This Committee, headed by the Minister of National Security, has the power to grant mercy or reduce sentencing.
“This entire process can sometimes take as much as two to three years,” Mrs. Bethel said.
But it is a complicated process that can drag on for even longer that that.
“However, if the Privy Council rules that there is no merit in the accused man’s appeal, the death row inmate has the right to file a constitutional motion, which starts the entire process all over again – the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the Privy Council,” she said.
Further delays come when inmates decide to appeal to the Inter-America Commission on Human Rights as a last ditched effort.
“After the entire five year process, if the government has not been successful in receiving a ‘yes’ answer to all those appellant processes, then it means the accused can no longer be hanged,” Mrs. Bethel said.
Ensuring that the lives of condemned men are spared is one of the main goals of the international human rights organization Amnesty International.
The London-based group continues to call on governments around the world to move toward the global trend of abolishing “cruel and senseless punishment in both law and practice.”
Though maintaining that it in no way seeks to detract from the seriousness of the crime of murder, Amnesty officials maintain that killing a condemned man is inhumane.
“The anger and fear felt by the people of the Caribbean as they face the horrific violence perpetrated by criminals is understandable,” an Amnesty International report dated January 20, 2003 states. “Killing via the death penalty however, is not the answer. It only serves to continue the cycle of violence.
“Political leaders should stop using their protection of public opinion as a justification for committing human rights violations under the guise of law.
“The death penalty is but an empty ‘tough on crime’ policy, popular with politicians who want to show they are dealing with violent crime, but it has never been shown to deter crime any more than other severe punishments,” the report said. “On the contrary, it could even cause more crime, due to the brutalizing effect is has on the society.”
More than 100 countries have abolished the death penalty. But some countries still hang on to the form of punishment.
In Jamaica, officials are attempting to amend the constitution, to resume executions, by removing some of the legal protections for death row inmates.
Similar constitutional amendments have been passed in Barbados and are currently proposed in Belize. The government of Trinidad and Tobago has also signaled its intentions to pass laws to make the resumption of executions easier.
In The Bahamas, the movement to abolish capital punishment has been quiet in recent years.
The last execution that took place here was in 2000 when David Mitchell, 27, was hanged for murdering a German couple. His execution was carried out despite international pleas for a stay of execution.
Mitchell had been one of three convicted killers due to be hanged at hourly intervals on January 6. One inmate, 51-year-old John Higgs, committed suicide before he could be hanged. The other, Eddison Thurston 32, was given a last-minute reprieve to appeal to the Privy Council.
By Macushla Pinder, The Bahama Journal
