Yvonne Ba­boolal

Je­sus Christ was the first death-penal­ty abo­li­tion­ist, said Baroness Scot­land of Asthal, PC, QC, as she sought to per­suade law stu­dents on Tues­day they have the pow­er to change T&T's manda­to­ry death-penal­ty law.Scot­land was one of the pre­sen­ters at a death-penal­ty de­bate at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Law Fac­ul­ty host­ed by the British High Com­mis­sion.

Madame Ruth Drei­fuss, for­mer Swiss pres­i­dent and Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty for Peace, a Unit­ed Na­tions en­ti­ty, was al­so an­oth­er speak­er lob­by­ing for the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in T&T.British High Com­mis­sion po­lit­i­cal of­fi­cer Matt Not­ting­ham said the Eu­ro­pean Union is on a world­wide cam­paign to abol­ish the death penal­ty, with a strong fo­cus on the Caribbean.Abo­li­tion is a pre-con­di­tion for en­try in­to the EU.Not­ting­ham said the EU's dri­ve is tied in with its hu­man-rights ob­jec­tive.

Scot­land, a British bar­ris­ter who served as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for Eng­land and Wales, used Chris­t­ian teach­ing as a sig­nif­i­cant rea­son for abo­li­tion.She said 99.9 per cent of the DNA of all hu­man be­ings was iden­ti­cal and this shared DNA is writ­ten in­to our hu­man­i­ty by God.All vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors of crime are our broth­ers and sis­ters, she said.She al­so said the weak­est and the poor­est are those who usu­al­ly re­ceive the death penal­ty pun­ish­ment for crime.

"The first true abo­li­tion­ist was Je­sus Christ," she told the au­di­ence in the Noor Has­sanali au­di­to­ri­um, re­fer­ring to the bib­li­cal sto­ry of the ston­ing of the woman caught in adul­tery."Je­sus said he who is with­out sin should cast the first stone."Scot­land said 99.9 per cent of all faiths al­so had a sim­i­lar the­ol­o­gy.She al­so coun­tered the ar­gu­ment of for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, the first pre­sen­ter at the de­bate, that he sup­port­ed the re­ten­tion of the death penal­ty be­cause it was the law.

The baroness said law was not im­mutable and asked whether it is not what peo­ple chose to make it."Change is pos­si­ble. You have a choice. Lead your­selves. Be the ar­biter of your own good for­tune," she urged law stu­dents.Drei­fuss al­so dis­missed Je­re­mie's claim that T&T did not ac­cept the con­straints of in­ter­na­tion­al treaties.A mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mis­sion against the Death Penal­ty, she said such treaties were al­ways the re­sult of ne­go­ti­a­tions and it was not com­pul­so­ry to join.

"But if a coun­try is part of an in­ter­na­tion­al treaty which does not ac­cept the manda­to­ry death penal­ty, then it's some­thing the gov­ern­ment of that coun­try should look at," she said.Drei­fuss said Bar­ba­dos, which re­tained the death penal­ty, is part of such a treaty and has be­gun to look at the mat­ter.

Je­re­mie, the lone voice in the de­bate in favour of the death penal­ty, re­called that the Privy Coun­cil, in a lo­cal case, al­so held it to be con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sound.He said sur­veys showed T&T cit­i­zens pre­fer it as a sen­tence for mur­der.The EU is sug­gest­ing coun­tries im­pose a mora­to­ri­um–a sus­pen­sion of the death-penal­ty law–as a first step to­wards abo­li­tion.