CHARLES KONG SOO

At­tor­ney Gre­go­ry Delzin said the Ju­ly 1994 ex­e­cu­tion of Glen Ash­by was a prime ex­am­ple of how so­cial and po­lit­i­cal pres­sures could in­flu­ence courts in how they be­have in cer­tain cir­cum­stances.

Dur­ing a we­bi­nar host­ed yes­ter­day by Greater Caribbean For Life, Del­zon said the courts grant­ed speedy stays of ex­e­cu­tion. Ash­by was hanged ten min­utes be­fore his at­tor­neys re­ceived a copy of the Privy Coun­cil’s stay of ex­e­cu­tion and just six days be­fore com­plet­ing five years un­der sen­tence of death which would have made him el­i­gi­ble to have his sen­tence com­mut­ed.

“The prob­lem with a stay of ex­e­cu­tion is even if you get it in the first in­stance, it must al­ways be ap­plied through the ap­pel­late stage. At any of those stages, if there is no stay of ex­e­cu­tion, your client can be ex­e­cut­ed as in the case of Glen Ash­by,” he said.

“In his case, we were be­fore the Court of Ap­peal ar­gu­ing against the Low­er Court’s de­ci­sion, the Court of Ap­peal sig­nalled that they did not agree with our sub­mis­sions, which would have meant that we would have to go to the Privy Coun­cil. The Court of Ap­peal did not grant a stay of ex­e­cu­tion to al­low us to go to the Privy Coun­cil, but ex­pressed the view that they did not ex­pect the Reg­is­trar to car­ry out the ex­e­cu­tion.”

Delzin said one of the pos­i­tives that came out of Ash­by’s death—if it could be put that way—was the courts there­after were very quick to grant stays of ex­e­cu­tion be­cause of the le­gal em­bar­rass­ment fol­low­ing state­ments from the Privy Coun­cil con­cern­ing the con­duct of the courts.

He said the en­tire death penal­ty process in terms of con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tions and chal­lenges de­pend­ed on the strength and in­de­pen­dence of the courts and the ju­di­cia­ries in the Caribbean were suf­fi­cient­ly strong and in­de­pen­dent af­ter Ash­by’s death.

Pres­i­dent of the World Coali­tion Against Death Penal­ty in Puer­to-Ri­co, Kevin Rivera-Med­i­na, said the Caribbean played an im­por­tant role in glob­al ef­forts for the ces­sa­tion of the death penal­ty.

He said Do­mini­ca vot­ed for the res­o­lu­tion on a mora­to­ri­um on the use of the death penal­ty at the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in 2018 and Guyana ab­stained from vot­ing on the Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tion in favour of a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty.

An­tiguan at­tor­ney Dr David Dorsett said that is­land cut and past­ed the UK’s Ex­tra­di­tion Act which states it will not ex­tra­dite a per­son from their ju­ris­dic­tion to an­oth­er ju­ris­dic­tion if in do­ing so the per­son is like­ly to face the death penal­ty and adopt­ed it.

Al­so speak­ing at the we­bi­nar was Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don who said cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is not a de­ter­rent to vi­o­lent crimes. Even with the hang­ing of Dole Chadee in 1999, de­spite that”nove­nas of hang­ings” of nine peo­ple, the mur­der rate in T&T kept es­ca­lat­ing.