A Privy Council ruling abolishing the mandatory death penalty for convicted murderers in The Bahamas has outraged the mother of a young man who was brutally murdered 13 years ago in Freeport.
The mandatory death penalty in The Bahamas was declared to be a breach of international human rights by five British law lords sitting on the Privy Council.
In an interview with The Freeport News yesterday, Hazel Roach, mother of Dion Patrick Roach, said the ruling came as a big disappointment to her and described it as a ‘ridiculous’ move.
Mrs. Roach said as far as she is aware, The Bahamas severed its ties with England a long time ago and is supposed to be taking care of its own judicial system even though there are certain procedures that still exist.
The challenge to capital punishment was brought forth by counsel representing Forrester Bowe Jr., who was found guilty in the Freeport Supreme Court in the shooting death of Dion at an apartment complex in Freeport on October 23, 1992. Mr. Bowe was later sentenced to death in 1998 and has been in prison for the past eight years.
Forrester Bowe Jr. is also one of four maximum security inmates of Her Majesty’s Prison who made the notorious and daring escape during the early hours of January 17, which resulted in the murder of Prison Officer Dion Bowles.
“What is eight years of Forrester Bowe’s life compared to the loss of my son at age 20,” Ms. Roach said. “He did not even get a chance to begin his life and, as a mother, I see this ruling as ridiculous. What does this say to the other criminals out there? That they can just kill people like that.”
Ms. Roach said she believes capital punishment should stand on the country’s law books and rightfully so as the Holy Bible endorses it.
“The Bible says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and it also says thou shall not kill,” she said. “So if we say The Bahamas is known as a Christian nation, why do we want to uphold one part of the Bible and then go and leave somebody else to make a decision when our sons and daughters are being killed, brutally raped, tied up in front of you and murdered?
“This is wrong and I am totally appalled at this. I don’t see how the Bahamian government can sit and let the Privy Council dictate.”
However, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, the senior law lord, said that as early as 1973, the mandatory death penalty should have been regarded as inhuman and degrading punishment.
Edward Fitzgerald, QC of Doughty Street, England, counsel for the appellants, said if judges had discretion on such a ruling in the past, then the 16 recorded executions in The Bahamas since 1973 probably would have not taken place.
The judgement is reportedly a major success for the law firms Simons Muirhead & Burton Solicitors and the Doughty Street Chambers, who have been leading the fight against the death penalty in the English-speaking Caribbean for the last 15 years.
An attorney from Simons Muirhead & Burton Solicitors was reportedly quoted as saying, “The ramifications and consequences of the Privy Council’s ruling are huge; there are implications for at least 30 prisoners on death row in The Bahamas whose cases will now have to be reviewed.”
It is believed that the implications for future murder trials will be the introduction of a completely new set of procedures restricting the imposition of the death penalty in the first instance.
Forrester Bowe Jr. had appealed the conviction to the Court of Appeal, where it was dismissed in April 1998. The decision to dismiss the appeal was affirmed by the Privy Council in April 2001.
However, on October 22, 2002, he petitioned the Privy Council for special leave appealing the constitutionality of the death penalty. The matter was then sent from the Privy Council back to the Court of Appeal for their view, but they returned the matter back to the Privy Council, saying they had no jurisdiction to hear the appeal.
Thirteen years later, Ms. Roach says she had made it to a point where she does not allow Dion’s death to make her bitter and has drawn closer to God. Dion, she said, was an average upcoming young man who was taken in the prime of his life. She added that he was just getting ready to choose a career path having finished Catholic High, and believes he was taken too soon.
“I believe that until it really touches close to the people that make the policies and some of these lawyers representing the criminals, then a different view will be taken,” she said. “It is not fair to the families of those people who are murdered. We can’t take this sitting down, I am ready now to find some mothers and get out there and protest against this. No, this is not right and I don’t think it should be accepted.
“That boy (Forrester) did not show one bit of remorse through any of those trials, cold blooded, he stared us down. I am very angry about this because this means that other criminals will think that they can do crime and not have to endure full punishment. God does not sleep and we are all going to have to face him. He (Forrester) will have to face his maker.”
By LISA S. KING, Freeport News Reporter
