• by Peter Richards (kingstown)
• Tuesday, September 08, 2009
• Inter Press Service

For human rights groups like Amnesty International and the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Human Rights Association (SVGHRA), Nov. 25 will be more than just another day in the Caribbean.

They will be anxiously following the outcome of a national referendum in St. Vincent and the Grenadines for a new constitution to replace the 1979 document that was handed down to the island when it gained political independence from Britain.

If the estimated 120,000 people give the Ralph Gonsalves government the approval it is seeking, they will also be sending a message to anti-death penalty opponents and human rights groups that they support state executions of persons convicted of murder.

The last execution in the English-speaking Caribbean — Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago — was carried out in St. Kitts last December when Charles Elroy Laplace, who had been on death row for four years, was hanged for murdering his wife.

In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the last execution took place in February 1995. There are currently three people on death row.

Amnesty International used the execution of Laplace to renew its call to Caribbean governments to do away with the death penalty, even as it acknowledged that while executions have become increasingly rare, support for the death penalty in the region is high.

Regional governments have continued to blame the London-based Privy Council for rulings designed to block executions by the state and in 2001, amid concerns that they were establishing a 'hanging court', established the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

But with the exception of Guyana and Barbados, the Privy Council still serves as the final court of appeal for the Commonwealth Caribbean.

Prime Minister Gonsalves says the new constitution 'better protects a person's right to life by ensuring that the deterrence of the death penalty for murder will be employed without being subject to a set of bizarre unreasonable and unacceptable judge made restrictions'.

He made special reference to Clause 29 which he says 'restores the death penalty and insulates it from further assaults by judges'.

That section makes it quite clear that 'nothing contained in or done under the authority of any law shall be held to be inconsistent with or in contravention of this section to the extent that the law in question authorizes the infliction of any description of punishment that was lawful in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines immediately before the coming into force of this Constitution'.

Further it states that 'no objection shall be taken in or by any court to a sentence of capital punishment being carried out within one year after the exhaustion of all proceedings embarked upon and diligently pursued by the person thus sentenced, in any court or tribunal or other body the jurisdiction of which is recognised by or under the laws of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, whether such court or tribunal or other body is located inside or outside Saint Vincent and the Grenadines...'

The prime minister argues that the clause 'drives a constitutional horse and chariot through the so called Pratt and Morgan decision relating to the time frame in which the penalty of death can be imposed for murder.'

The Privy Council has ruled through the Pratt and Morgan decision that persons who have been on death row for five years cannot be executed. In 2002, the Law Lords unanimously struck down the mandatory death sentence of persons convicted of murder in the Eastern Caribbean and Belize, as being in breach of their respective constitutions. It extended the ruling to The Bahamas in 2006.

Human rights advocates regarded the decision as a 'milestone in the international campaign against the death penalty', arguing that it signaled the end of the mandatory death penalty in the English-speaking Caribbean.

The St. Vincent and the Grenadines prime minister says in the new constitution 'a distinction is made between capital murder for which you must have the death penalty and non-capital murder'.

He said arguments that Britain and by extension Europe is moving away from the death penalty and that Caribbean countries should follow suit are baseless, 'because the death penalty is available if you were to kill the Queen'.

But the SVGHRA, which is 'strongly opposed' to the new clause and the retention of the death penalty, says it plans to publish a paper ahead of the referendum to 'educate' citizens on the issue.

'If the referendum goes in favour...we all have to abide by the constitution, but what I can say is that we will certainly not be meeting the evolving standards of human rights all around the world,' SVGHRA president Nicole Sylvester told IPS.

'We will certainly be out of sync and I certainly will consider ...that particular provision a regressive step in today's day and age,' she said.

The SVGHRA backs the position outlined by the Privy Council that the death sentence is not mandatory and that the sentencing phase allows judges latitude in sentencing.

'It is not the Privy Council who determines it,' she said, adding 'the position as it stands now...simply ensures a level playing field and it simply ensures that the judges who are trained sentencers are enabled to do what they are best qualified to do'. 'We do recognise that there is an escalation in the types of crimes and the vicious violence in our society, but we have to respond in a manner that shows we are also enlightened,' she added.

The main opposition National Democratic Party (NDP), which is calling on supporters to vote 'no' in the referendum, concedes there are many people in the country who are of the opinion 'that you can still hang a man if he kills somebody and therefore should not be pushing that too hard' in the new constitution.

NDP leader Arnhim Eustace said the section 'Alienable Rights' had been significantly altered to suit the government and that his party would have preferred the deleted clause that states 'the maintenance of human dignity requires solemn appreciation that man is endowed by God with certain inalienable rights and functions including the right to life...'

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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