Vi­jay Ma­haraj

Through­out hu­man his­to­ry, the death penal­ty “is the ex­e­cu­tion of an of­fend­er sen­tenced to death af­ter con­vic­tion by a court of law of a crim­i­nal of­fence.” A crime surge has blight­ed T&T–mur­ders, home in­va­sions, kid­nap­ping for ran­som, and ex­tor­tion of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The mur­der rate for 2024 was 288 in the first week of Ju­ly. Some peo­ple, in­clud­ing law en­force­ment of­fi­cials, might claim suc­cess in bring­ing down the num­ber of homi­cides so far this year.

Many so­cial and re­li­gious ac­tivists in­sist that the State of T&T re­in­sti­tute hang­ing for cap­i­tal of­fences. But some in our midst think of them as blood­thirsty cit­i­zens.

Ac­cord­ing to the law of T&T, “Every per­son con­vict­ed of mur­der shall suf­fer death ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 4 of the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act.” The Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Act, Chap­ter 12:02 at Sec­tion 57 pro­vides: “Every war­rant for the ex­e­cu­tion of any pris­on­er un­der sen­tence of death shall be un­der the hand and Seal of the Pres­i­dent and shall be di­rect­ed to the Mar­shall, and shall be car­ried in­to ex­e­cu­tion by such Mar­shall or his as­sis­tant at such time and place as men­tioned in the war­rant, and the war­rant shall be in the form set out as Form A in the Sec­ond Sched­ule…” The law in T&T is that death by hang­ing for cap­i­tal of­fences can take place.

But be­cause of cer­tain re­stric­tions by the Privy Coun­cil, our high­est Court based in Lon­don, it has be­come al­most im­pos­si­ble to in­voke this law that is be­ing sup­port­ed by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90 per cent of our pop­u­la­tion.

The Privy Coun­cil, based in Lon­don Eng­land has banned the death penal­ty at home and has lob­bied its for­mer colonies, like T&T, to fol­low suit.

Im­ped­i­ments have been placed to block ex­e­cu­tions in our re­gion by is­su­ing a rul­ing in 1993 that lim­it­ed the amount of time con­vict­ed killers should have to spend on death row. The last hang­ing in T&T was in Ju­ly 1999 when An­tho­ny Brig­gs paid with his life for blud­geoned taxi dri­ver Siew­dath Ramkissoon to death dur­ing a rob­bery in Au­gust 1992.

Al­though the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ed the hang­ing then and now, the late Arch­bish­op An­tho­ny Pan­tin said, “Enough blood has been spilled.”

But what re­al­ly is the po­si­tion of the Chris­t­ian, Hin­du and oth­er church­es in T&T with re­gard to the hang­ing of those con­vict­ed of mur­der?

The sixth com­mand­ment to Chris­tians is em­phat­ic, “Thou shalt not kill.” And ac­cord­ing to NUM 35:16, “The mur­der­er shall sure­ly be put to death,” and at NUM 35:31, “Ye shall take no sat­is­fac­tions for the life of a mur­der­er, which is guilty of death: but he shall be sure­ly put to death.”

One of Trinidad Hin­du’s favourite re­li­gious books is the Ra­mayan. A chap­ter in the Yud­dha Kan­dam says, “He that does good is re­ward­ed, and he that com­mits sin is pun­ished.” This re­li­gious book makes it quite clear: “A wrong-do­er can­not es­cape the dire con­se­quences of his ac­tions. He has to suf­fer for his sins at the ap­proach of the grim hour.”

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha is deeply con­cerned about the di­rec­tion in which our na­tion is de­vel­op­ing. Our peo­ple are not venge­ful, but we must stop and de­bate the crim­i­nal­i­ty that now seems to be part of our na­tion­al cul­ture.

Prof Ramesh De­osaran, for­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, in his book, “A So­ci­ety Un­der Siege (1993)”, quot­ed from a let­ter in the lo­cal me­dia: “I think the time has come for cit­i­zens to ag­i­tate for the speed­i­er ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice in this coun­try. For too long we have suf­fered the agony of hav­ing to en­dure the de­nial of our just re­liefs, some­times at the risk of los­ing these re­turns al­to­geth­er, for the sim­ple rea­son of the lethar­gic spin of the ju­di­cial and bu­reau­crat­ic wheel …

“The pre­vail­ing at­ti­tude of the ad­min­is­tra­tors of jus­tice lends it­self to a con­sid­er­able de­gree to the per­pe­tra­tion of crime. I am bold to state that the high lev­el of crime in this coun­try bears its sta­tus, though in no small mea­sure, from the crim­i­nals’ ab­sence of con­fi­dence that ret­ri­bu­tion would be swift.”

A not­ed Amer­i­can fam­i­ly is­sued a state­ment when one of their fam­i­ly mem­bers was mur­dered. “Loved ones wrenched from our lives by vi­o­lent crimes de­serve more beau­ti­ful, no­ble and ho­n­ourable memo­ri­als than pre­med­i­tat­ed state-sanc­tioned killings.”

Those op­posed to the hang­man find every ex­cuse in de­fence of the crim­i­nal. Re­form of the prison sys­tem, bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties at the Re­mand Yard and soon, we may hear a call for air-con­di­tioned prison cells and to have cater­ers from out­side the prison sup­ply food. 

Vi­jay Ma­haraj is Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha.