The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

CHIEF Justice Sir Hartman Longley yesterday said it would take a massacre similar to the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris for the death penalty to be imposed in The Bahamas.

Speaking a few weeks after the country hit a new murder record – with 149 homicides in 2015 – Sir Hartman told judicial officers during the 2016 Legal Year Opening Ceremony held in the Supreme Court that “the death penalty is virtually dead”.

“I share the view expressed by the president of the Court of Appeal,” Sir Hartman said. “Lest we have the experience of Charlie Hebdo, the chances of ever imposing the death penalty under the present system are nil.”

A year ago, 12 people were killed after gunmen burst into a magazine office in Paris, France. At least two gunmen attacked the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and shocked witnesses spoke of sustained gunfire at the office as the attackers opened fire with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Two brothers suspected of the magazine shootings were killed in an assault at a warehouse where they had held a hostage north of Paris.

“The reality is, and I imagine it is, that a constitutional amendment is necessary,” Sir Hartman said to judicial officers attending the ceremony.

The last person executed in the Bahamas was David Mitchell in January 2000.

He was convicted of stabbing two German tourists to death.

Mitchell’s execution was controversial because it was carried out while he had an appeal pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

International criticism of the move was followed by a moratorium on capital punishment, which lasted until the Privy Council’s 2006 decision in the case of Maxo Tido.

In 2011, after a ruling from the London-based Privy Council, the Ingraham administration amended the death penalty law to specify the “worst of the worst” murders that would warrant execution.

Under the amended law, a person who kills a police or defence force officer, member of the Departments of Customs or Immigration, judiciary or prison services would be eligible for a death sentence. A person would also be eligible for death once convicted of murdering someone during a rape, robbery, kidnapping or act of terrorism.

Three years ago, a Constitutional Reform Commission was appointed by the Christie administration to conduct a comprehensive review of the Constitution and recommend a number of changes to it including the retention and enforcement of capital punishment.

In November 2014 the Court of Appeal overturned Anthony Clarke Sr’s death sentence for a paid execution and returned the matter to the Supreme Court for re-sentencing.

The judges did so after coming to a general consensus that “hanging is over” because of the vague threshold set by the Privy Council in past rulings like Maxo Tido, whose death sentence for the brutal murder of a 16-year-old girl was ultimately overturned because the London court found the murder was not “the worst of the worst.”