Trinidad and Tobago may resume executions imminently

Yesterday a letter was sent to Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, expressing the signatories’ concern and dismay at the new government’s recent announcement that it will imminently resume execution of its death row prisoners.

It was signed by, among others, Reprieve, Amicus, the Bar Human Rights Committee and the Law Society.

No execution has been carried out in Trinidad and Tobago since 1999, but the country’s new administration seems to feel that a strong pro-death penalty stance will prove a popular response to high and rising rates of intentional homicide and other violent crime. However, several studies have shown that the relationship between use of the death penalty and crime rates is more likely to be a positive correlation than a negative one. The Trinidad and Tobago Humanist Society have issued a statement commenting on this and drawing a comparison between Canada, where the death penalty was abolished in 1976, and the USA, where it was reinstated the same year. In the former country, homicide rates subsequently declined, whereas in the latter rates rose.

The final court of appeal for Trinidad and Tobago is still the Privy Council in London, a legacy of its history as a British colony. This can be problematic when capital cases come before the British judiciary via this route – they must strike a delicate balance between sensitivity to a foreign jurisdiction and observing domestic mores. As a general rule, they have leaned towards restricting use of the death penalty where possible, and their decisions are binding. As Martin Daly, President of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago, has remarked:

“The Privy Council has plainly stated that its judicial decisions, which can be properly described as restrictions on carrying out the death penalty, can be reversed. But that the means to do so is by amendment of the Constitution.”

However, senior government ministers have been keen to frame the debate as a matter of national sovereignty. Austin Jack Warner stated:

"I have told the Attorney General that he must tell us what are some of the things we must do so as to free ourselves from these international organisations which try to frustrate the law of the land."

For Warner, the “law of the land” is execution by hanging. The letter to Ms Persad-Bissessar recognizes that Trinidad and Tobago is a free and democratic society and that its laws are the sole preserve of its own legislature, but urges the Prime Minister to consider the logical arguments against resuming the mandatory imposition of the death penalty for certain crimes. It is hoped that she will listen.