At the crux of the death penalty issue in T&T is the failure of succeeding governments, institutions and the general population, to work decisively towards determining whether or not convicted killers should be executed.
The arguments and contentions have gone back and forth for three decades. The British Privy Council, said in its Pratt and Morgan judgment that countries that wish to carry out the death penalty must do so within five years of the first conviction.
Individual countries of the Caribbean however, find themselves either unable to meet the stipulations laid down by the Privy Council and/or conflicted within.
At the end of a regional/international conference held in Guyana recently, the countries governed by Pratt and Morgan found themselves no closer to making a determination.
Organisers of the conference, the European Union, with a fixed position against execution must have hoped for a determination.
The EU is sure that executions should end and it said so in its conference position–formalise a moratorium on the death penalty with the intention of working towards abolition, and fall in line with what the Europeans say is the norm among international countries.
However, there was little by way of an alternative option for Caribbean countries wanting to enforce the law on the death penalty in their countries; so it was not really a conference on options and perspectives from Caribbean states but rather an attempt to ensure that Caribbean states abolish the death penalty.
In T&T, Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi has indicated his intention to have the death penalty implemented–to execute persons convicted of murder.
The present AG has attracted the support of former attorney general Ramesh Maharaj who 16 years ago worked out a way to allow convicted killers to have their moment before courts and then execute nine of them one morning.
In Trinidad there is an undoubted body of opinion among human rights organisations and a group of attorneys who are for the ending of the death penalty.
Likewise, there are those who are fully of the view that execution is not about preventing murders, but rather a punishment for such crimes as designated by the law.
Going back to the late 1980s when the committee headed by attorney Elton Prescott advocated the categorisation of murders with execution the penalty for very deliberate and heinous crimes, the debate floundered around and then died.
Meanwhile left languishing on Death Row are dozens of individuals who do not know if tomorrow morning the hangman will knock on their cell gates.
T&T like many other Caribbean countries needs to discuss to finality, with all options open, whether to execute or not.
Sure the decision can be to abolish or execute but it must be one made by the institutions and peoples of the country.
One option put forward by the EU suggests that governments and leaders take the decision notwithstanding the position of their population.
That is referred to as strong leadership.
Caribbean countries, T&T at the top of the list, have to be decisive about matters such as the death penalty. And while the humanity of the EU is well understood, the governments, the military and the economic powers of these same countries engage in activities every day which result in death and destruction of tens of thousands.
Caribbean countries should stop letting others make final decisions for them.