The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

THE question of whether the mandatory death penalty for murders ought to remain on the law books should be put to the electorate, Court of Appeal President Anita Allen said yesterday.

Voters are expected to head to the polls ahead of the country’s 40th year of independence to decide on the changes they would like made to the constitution. It is said that Prime Minister Perry Christie will call that date after the Reform Commission presents its recommendations.

Justice Allen explained to Commission members that between 2006 and 2011 several cases, including Bowe vs Davis and Pipersburgh vs the Queen were challenging in concluding the death penalty.

The Privy Council said the death penalty should only be imposed in cases that were “the worst of the worst or the rarest of the rare.” They also said that there would have to be no reasonable prospect of reform for the convict and the object of punishment could not be achieved by any other means than the death penalty.

Those two guidelines were put to the test particularly as the Privy Council dealt with the Maxo Tido case in 2011.

“There the board,” Justice Allen said, “found that the murder of a school girl who had been lured from her parents’ home in the middle of the night, tortured and murdered by the bludgeoning of her head such that her brain tissue was spewed outside her body, was not the “worst of the worst or the rarest of the rare.”

“There will always be a worse or rarer case than the case being considered, and the practical effect of these decisions is the abolition of the death penalty.”

She also wants taxpayers to foot the cost of retaining attorneys for accused persons who are otherwise not able to afford legal assistance.

“To achieve the goal of a fair hearing in criminal proceedings, paragraph 2 of article 20 in subparagraph (d) assures to a criminal defendant who is unable to afford counsel, the right to counsel at the public’s expense.

“There are many defendants who are unrepresented and while a presiding judge is to seek to ensure that the trial is fair to both the unrepresented litigant and the state, which is always legally represented, the assistance which a court can properly give to the unrepresented litigant is limited,” Justice Allen said.