The Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) has de­nied spe­cial leave to mem­bers of the Guyana De­fence Force (GDF) who were seek­ing to chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty.

Two GDF mem­bers, Sher­wyn Harte and De­on Greenidge had sought per­mis­sion to ap­peal the sen­tence im­posed by the Court of Ap­peal up­on them and to chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty it­self.

Harte, Greenidge and an­oth­er un­named GDF mem­ber were in­dict­ed in 2013 un­der the Crim­i­nal Law Of­fences Act (CLOA) for the mur­der of Dwieve Kant Ram­dass, who was killed on 20 Au­gust 2009.

The three sol­diers robbed Ram­dass of GUY$17 mil­lion (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) and threw him over­board where he drowned. They then pro­ceed­ed to di­vide the stolen mon­ey among them­selves equal­ly.

The three men were sen­tenced to death on a manda­to­ry ba­sis, pur­suant to the un-amend­ed sec­tion 100 of the CLOA, All three ap­pealed their con­vic­tions. Harte and Greenidge al­so ar­gued that the death penal­ty was an un­con­sti­tu­tion­al pun­ish­ment, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al par­tic­i­pat­ed as an in­ter­ven­er to re­but that ar­gu­ment.

The Court of Ap­peal up­held the con­vic­tions but agreed that the orig­i­nal death sen­tences should be va­cat­ed and re­placed by life sen­tences and that the two men should serve 18 years in prison be­fore be­ing el­i­gi­ble for pa­role.

But Harte and Greenidge sought per­mis­sion to ap­peal this sec­tion of the judg­ment to the CCJ. Greenidge al­so sought per­mis­sion to ap­peal his con­vic­tion on the ground that the ev­i­dence against him con­sist­ed sole­ly of the con­tents of his cau­tion state­ment, which did not dis­close any pri­or plan to mur­der or par­tic­i­pate in the mur­der of the de­ceased.

Harte and Greenidge al­so sought to ob­tain an or­der from the CCJ de­clar­ing the death penal­ty to be “un­con­sti­tu­tion­al” and, there­fore, could not be law­ful­ly im­posed in Guyana on any­one.

But in its rul­ing, the CCJ, Guyana’s high­est and fi­nal court, took the view in re­la­tion to Greenidge’s con­vic­tion, that he did not es­tab­lish any re­al­is­tic pos­si­bil­i­ty that there had been a mis­car­riage of jus­tice.

The CCJ ruled that there was am­ple ev­i­dence in the cau­tion state­ment and the cir­cum­stan­tial ev­i­dence on which a ju­ry, prop­er­ly di­rect­ed, could have reached the con­clu­sion that Greenidge was par­ty to the joint en­ter­prise to rob and mur­der the de­ceased.

The Court al­so not­ed that there was no ev­i­dence of any at­tempt by Greenidge to as­sist the de­ceased when he was in dis­tress or oth­er­wise to dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the heinous crime against a cit­i­zen of the Re­pub­lic whose safe­ty he had sworn to pro­tect.

Re­gard­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty, the CCJ ruled that Harte and Greenidge faced no threat of ex­e­cu­tion, so the ar­gu­ments raised on this is­sue were pure­ly aca­d­e­m­ic in na­ture. It reaf­firmed that the Court will on­ly hear aca­d­e­m­ic ap­peals in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.

Harte and Greenidge al­so took is­sue with some of the rea­son­ing of the Court of Ap­peal re­gard­ing the death penal­ty be­ing a “saved law” from the colo­nial era. The CCJ re­mind­ed that it had ex­pound­ed clear views on the is­sue of the sav­ings clause and nat­u­ral­ly, if there is any vari­ance be­tween those views and the rea­son­ing of the Court of Ap­peal, the views of this Court must pre­vail.

Harte and Greenidge al­so con­tend­ed that the Court of Ap­peal did not ad­here to the prop­er sen­tenc­ing method­ol­o­gy in va­cat­ing the death penal­ty and im­pos­ing life sen­tences with tar­iffs. The CCJ, bear­ing in mind that the of­fend­ers were mem­bers of the De­fence Force who robbed and mur­dered an in­no­cent cit­i­zen, found that there was no ground for re­gard­ing the sen­tence im­posed as ex­ces­sive or so man­i­fest­ly out­side the main­stream of sen­tences as would mer­it grant­i­ng leave to ap­peal it.

Fur­ther­more, the Court of Ap­peal had im­posed the min­i­mum sen­tence that it was man­dat­ed to do un­der the CLOA (in­deed less than the min­i­mum of 20 years) and there­fore the ap­pli­cants had no ba­sis for com­plaint.

The CCJ said as a re­sult, the ap­pli­ca­tion for spe­cial leave was dis­missed, with no or­ders as to costs.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Jul 28, CMC

CMC/ag/ir/2023