Imbert: AG against hangings

Attorney General Anand Ramlogan, piloter of the Death Penalty Bill to facilitate hangings, is an abolitionist and bitterly opposed to capital punishment. This was the charge made by Opposition Diego Martin East MP Colm Imbert during his contribution in the House yesterday. Imbert, insisting that the bill before the Lower House was really going to abolish the death penalty and not facilitate it, based his accusations against the AG on an article he wrote in 2004 headlined: “Saying No To The Death Penality”.

In the column, Ramlogan said he could not support the death penalty because the justice system was flawed and called on the then PNM government to abolish the death penalty, Imbert said. “Shocking!” East Port-of-Spain MP, Marlene McDonald, threw out. “Mr Speaker, the piloter of bill is bitterly opposed to hanging. He is an abolitionist,” Imbert said. Imbert said he could find no other reason for the bill which would do the opposite of what it said it would do.

“I would not be surprised if the AG, consciously or unconsciously, is an abolitionist.” Imbert quoted from a 2000 article by Martin Daly SC who said the same death penalty legislation, brought by the then UNC government, would open up a flood of litigations and judicial review by convicted murderers. Earlier, Imbert was cautioned by Speaker Wade Mark for using a Shakespearan quote from Macbeth to describe the contributions of Gasparillo MP Surujrattan Rambachan.