The death penalty will remain on this country’s statute books as the punishment for murder.
On Monday, the Privy Council held the punishment, though deemed cruel and unusual internationally, was not unconstitutional as it dismissed the appeal of a convicted killer.
However, this country did not escape reproof from the Law Lords for keeping the hangman’s noose.
“It is striking that there remains on the statute book a provision which, as the government accepts, is a cruel and unusual punishment because it mandates the death penalty without regard to the degree of culpability.
“Nonetheless, such a provision is not unconstitutional,” said Lord Patrick Hodge, who wrote the decision.Also presiding on the appeal were Lords Reed Lloyd-Jones, Sales, Hamblen, Stephens and Hughes, Lady Arden and Sir Nigel Davis.
Trinidad and Tobago is the only country in the English-speaking Caribbean that retains the mandatory death penalty.
The Death Penalty Project, a non-profit organisation providing free legal representation to people facing capital punishment, estimated there were some 45 people on death row, and approximately 1,300 remanded for murder.
The challenge to the death penalty came from convicted killer Jay Chandler, who asked the Law Lords to rule on its mandatory nature as the only punishment for murder. Although he lost his previous appeals, the Privy Council agreed to review its prior decisions on the constitutional validity of the mandatory death penalty because of a 2018 ruling in the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) on a Barbados case. In that case, the CCJ held the mandatory death penalty violated the rights protected under Barbados’s Constitution, departing from earlier judgments given by the Privy Council.
Chandler argued that section 4 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1925, which provides that “every person convicted of murder shall suffer death,” was inconsistent with critical rights afforded by the Constitution, including the right to life.
In asking the Law Lords to depart from the previous decision, which upheld the mandatory death penalty, Chandler’s lawyers argued because it was inconsistent with the rights protected by the Constitution, it was, therefore, unconstitutional, unlawful, and must be read as providing a discretionary death sentence.
However, in defence of the penalty, the State’s legal team, led by Senior Counsel Fyard Hosein, argued the death penalty was immunised from a challenge by the savings clause which insulates colonial legislation from review except by Parliament.
The Privy Council agreed, saying, “The 1976 Constitution has allocated to Parliament, as the democratic organ of government, the task of reforming and updating the law, including such laws.”
The Privy Council’s ruling on the saving clause –one of at least four cases in which it is being challenged – is now settled, as Hodge said to say now that existing laws were modified in 1962 when for many years the government and people of TT have conducted their affairs on the basis there was no modification
