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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Death sentence a bit too harsh

by

20140214

The Privy Coun­cil has quashed the death sen­tence im­posed on a 36-year-old man con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing a fire­man dur­ing a car­jack­ing in 2002.In a 29-page judg­ment de­liv­ered by a five-mem­ber ap­peal pan­el yes­ter­day, the British court gave three rea­sons for quash­ing the death sen­tence, in­clud­ing be­cause it con­sti­tutes "cru­el and un­usu­al pun­ish­ment" which is in­con­sis­tent with Sec­tions 4(a) and 5(2)(b) of the Con­sti­tu­tion.While refer­ing to its well known judg­ments in the Ja­maican death penal­ty cas­es of Pratt and Mor­gan, the judges al­so said the sen­tence could not be ap­plied as Ri­car­do An­tho­ny Daniel had al­ready served five years on death row be­fore his ap­peal was de­ter­mined.Its third rea­son for quash­ing Daniel's sen­tence and re­vert­ing it to the Court of Ap­peal for its re­con­sid­er­a­tion was that his case fell with­in the "felony mur­der" rule.

The rule em­pow­ers judges to by­pass the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der in lieu of a prison sen­tence in cas­es where a per­son kills an­oth­er while com­mit­ting an­oth­er crim­i­nal of­fence.

Daniel, a fa­ther of two, was first con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Sha­heed Mo­hammed in 2008. He ap­pealed and the Ap­peal Court or­dered re­tri­al, which end­ed in him be­ing re­con­vict­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2011.Mo­hammed, a fire sub-sta­tion of­fi­cer at­tached to the Ch­agua­nas Fire Sta­tion, was shot just out­side his Freeport home around 5.30 pm on Ju­ly 3, 2002, dur­ing an at­tempt­ed rob­bery.He was ward­ed at the In­ten­sive Care Unit of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for 28 days be­fore he died.In both his tri­als the State led ev­i­dence that an eye­wit­ness saw Daniel rob­bing and shoot­ing Mo­hammed.Pros­e­cu­tors al­so ten­dered a con­fes­sion state­ment al­leged­ly giv­en by Daniel af­ter he was ar­rest­ed. How­ev­er, he al­leged it was im­prop­er­ly ob­tained by po­lice.In the state­ment, Daniel claimed dur­ing the rob­bery, Mo­hammed hit him in his head with a beer bot­tle and be­gan strug­gling with him for the gun dur­ing which time he shot him three times.In ap­peal, Daniel's at­tor­neys sub­mit­ted that Mo­hammed had pro­voked Daniel in­to shoot­ing him by re­sist­ing the rob­bery.

They claimed while he had not raised the de­fence of provo­ca­tion dur­ing both his tri­als, the tri­al judges should have nonethe­less di­rect­ed the ju­ry on the is­sue.The Ap­peal Court had dis­missed this as­ser­tion in Daniel's ap­peal while stat­ing that such a de­fence can on­ly be in­voked if the vic­tim's re­sponse to ac­cused's ac­tions went be­yond what was "rea­son­able, pre­dictable and pro­por­tion­ate."

In the judg­ment, which was de­liv­ered by Lord An­tho­ny Hugh­es, the ap­peal pan­el agreed with the lo­cal Ap­peal Court that provo­ca­tion de­fence could not be used in cas­es of "felony mur­der."Hugh­es said there was no ab­solute rule of law that "self-in­duced" provo­ca­tion could not be re­lied up­on in oth­er mur­der cas­es and it should be "scrupu­lous­ly" ap­plied by tri­al judges.Hugh­es said to prove the de­fence, ac­cused peo­ple still had to prove that their ac­tions were di­rect­ly caused by the vic­tim's provoca­tive acts and that a rea­son­able per­son would have re­sponse to these acts in the same man­ner.Deal­ing specif­i­cal­ly with Daniel's case Hugh­es said: "There was no ev­i­dence of loss of con­trol fit to go the ju­ry and thus provo­ca­tion did not arise."


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