The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

THE Grand Bahama Human Rights Association yesterday urged the Minnis administration to reconsider its intention to push for the death penalty to be enforced to ensure criminals are punished to the full extent of the law.

In a statement released on Thursday, the GBHRA commended the FNM for its stated commitment to reversing the upward trend in violent crime, but further warned "capital punishment is simply not the way to do it."

The statement came two days after National Security Minister Marvin Dames, in an interview with The Tribune on Tuesday, said his party would use everything on the law books, including capital punishment, to make The Bahamas safe for "law-abiding citizens".

However, to debunk the perceived connection between increased capital punishment and decreased crime, the GBHRA contended 90 per cent of criminologists have agreed that capital punishment is "a totally pointless exercise from the perspective of reducing violent crime".

The association said many of the most violent countries in the world are those which have the death penalty on their law books.

"This is because, as studies show, the death penalty contributes significantly to the brutalisation of individuals and society as a whole, which in turn leads to higher rates of murder and violence," the GBHRA noted.

"In the US, states that retain the death penalty have higher murder rates than those that have abolished it. Capital punishment has also been linked to higher rates of violence against police and officers and increased anti-social behaviour generally.

"In addition, it is an inescapable fact that sooner or later, societies that engage in capital punishment will execute an innocent person. No system of justice is perfect, court witnesses make mistakes and jurors do not always vote according to evidence."

The GBHRA asserted the execution of an individual is an "irreversible act of state violence" that can never be taken back or atoned for if it is later realised that it was wrongfully applied.

"According to Amnesty International, 130 people sentenced to death in the United States have been found innocent since 1973 and released from death row. Many others were found to have been wrongfully convicted when it was already too late.

"Such practical considerations aside, there is also a strong moral objection to capital punishment. As a nation founded on an abiding respect for Christian values and the rights of the individual, The Bahamas must always be seen to affirm the maxim that all life is sacred.

"Everyone has a sacred and inalienable right to life, even those who commit murder. Sentencing a person to death and executing them clearly violates this right," the group added.

The GBHRA said the government should consider that trends in criminality and anti-social behaviour cannot be meaningfully reversed unless the underlying causes are addressed.

The group added that the government, while doing all it can to protect law-abiding citizens, it should look to combat poverty, child neglect, domestic violence, drug addiction and the other social ills, all of which, GBHRA said, have been "repeatedly proven" to drive vulnerable young people toward a life of crime.

To this end, GBHRA said returning The Bahamas to a "sense of peace, safety and property," will take nothing short of a total commitment by government, civil society and ordinary citizens to breaking the cycle of social degeneration that, it argued, has given rise to crime.

In conclusion, the group urged the government to lead the way in restoring a sense of decency and civility to the nation and to resist taking the country down the road toward further violence, retribution and brutality.

A 2006 decision by the London-based Privy Council, The Bahamas' highest court of appeal, quashed the country's mandatory death penalty for murder convicts, which it said was unconstitutional.

In 2011, the Privy Council also said the death penalty should only be given in cases where the offence falls into the category of the "worst of the worst".

That same year, the Ingraham administration made changes to the Penal Code to set out the criteria for the types of murders that would attract a discretionary death penalty after conviction.

The last person to be executed by the state was David Mitchell in January 2000.