The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

CONSTITUTIONAL Commission Chairman Sean McWeeney said yesterday that he doubts political leaders would be able to amass the political will needed to have the death penalty carried out despite widespread public support.

Mr McWeeney, QC, pointed to a significant philosophical divide among high-ranking Bahamians that cut across party lines as he contemplated the viability of calls for the government to enforce hangings.

He maintained that the only chance legislators had in ensuring capital punishment laws were enforced is to amend the Constitution.

“We recommended it might be worth the effort to amend the Constitution with the view to tying the hands of Privy Council,” he said.

“That will be done by basically specifying the kinds of cases that would be worst of the worst rather than leaving to Privy Council to decided what is worst. I think philosophically the Privy Council is opposed to the death penalty and they will keep moving the goal post on you.

“The only hope you have is putting it in the Constitution specifying the criteria.”

“They (the Privy Council) have demonstrated such intellectual ingenuity,” he said, “they are in effect making social policy for The Bahamas and it stems from a deeply rooted philosophical objection to capital punishment. They think it’s primitive and that they have a duty to bring us to new enlightenment.”

His comments follow pronouncements by Opposition Leader Dr Hubert Minnis that the necks of “murderous scumbags” in the country must be “popped”. Dr Minnis renewed his full support for capital punishment as he castigated the Christie administration for failing “miserably” in its obligation to keep Bahamians safe.

Mr McWeeney said he personally believes that capital punishment would have a deterrent effect in a small society like the Bahamas, if only impacting crimes committed by reoffenders.

He said: “I think a part of the problem is that both within government and the FNM there are a number of persons, high ranking persons, who also have philosophical objections to capital punishment. Unlike the issue of gender equality this is a true conscience vote. I don’t think you’ll see the whip applied on this matter because there are politicians who are against capital punishment on moral grounds, and that also may be an impediment to getting the political will together.

“I know there are members in both camps that have a very deep opposition. There is no question if you do a referendum you would get 90 per cent support for it.”

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 decision in the case of Maxo Tido.

In June 2011, the high court overturned Tido’s death sentence in connection with the killing of 16-year-old Donnell Connover, whose body was found off Cowpen Road, battered and bruised and her skull crushed. There was additional evidence that parts of her body were burned after her death.

But the Privy Council concluded that the murder was not an example of the “worst of the worst”.

Several months later, Parliament passed legislation to define the types of murder constituting the “worst of the worst” guidelines set out by the London court.

However, Mr McWeeney explained that the amendments to the Penal Code were inferior in the scope of the Privy Council.

During the 2016 Legal Year Opening Ceremony, Chief Justice Sir Hartman Longley declared that “the death penalty is virtually dead.”

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

In the Paris attack, 12 people were killed after gunmen burst into the satirical magazine’s office.

Yesterday, Mr McWeeney said: “It’s a difficult situation to deal with because when the Privy Council sits on Bahamian cases it’s doing so as a Bahamian court, it’s constitutionally our final court. The problem is because of the composition of the Privy Council they will inevitably be influenced by whatever the prevailing social policies are in Britain and the First World.

“But even if we were to move to the Caribbean Court of Justice there is nothing in their jurisprudence which would suggest that they would do so, that may be a false hope.

“It’s good to talk about it,” he said, “(but) the only chance you have of reinstating it is by constitutionalising it.”