Local observers have noted with interest a move by the Jamaican Senate to pass an amendment to that countryﾴs Offences Against the Person Act on Friday that removes the mandatory sentence of death for capital murder, giving the court the option of either death penalty or life imprisonment for all murder convicts.
The amendment followed a ruling by the London-based Privy Council that the death penalty is unconstitutional in Jamaica.
If the high court makes a similar ruling in the case before it involving two Bahamian convicts, a similar change in law could be required.
In The Bahamas, convicted murderers are automatically sentenced to death, regardless of the type of murder cases.
Defense lawyers for murder convicts Forrester Bowe and Trono Davis were forced to appeal to the Privy Council after the Court of Appeal said it did not have jurisdiction to hear arguments challenging the constitutionality of mandatory death sentences in murder convictions.
The lawyers have claimed that mandatory death sentences violate their clientsﾴ rights to life as provided in the constitution.
Attorney General Alfred Sears has said a ruling in their favour could impact all condemned men in the country, but authorities will have to deal with them on a case-by-case basis.
Bowe and Davis await the outcome of their appeal at a time when the climate for change as it relates to the mandatory death sentence appears ripe.
Just last year, the Privy Council ruled that Trinidadﾴs mandatory death sentence for murder was also unconstitutional. It said that murder cases were too varied to carry a mandatory sentence.
Minister Sears said earlier this year that, ﾓThe Privy Councilﾴs holding is that a judge, as in all other cases, should be able to take into consideration all of the facts and all the circumstances and give an appropriate sentence which may be something less than one case or perhaps even more.ﾒ
The failure of The Bahamas to resume the execution of the death penalty since David Mitchell was hanged in 2000 is due in part to the various avenues available for convicts to avoid executions, he has indicated.
The Bahama Journal
