Jamaica death penalty abolished

Britain’s Privy Council has ruled that Jamaica’s mandatory death penalty for murder convictions was unconstitutional.

But the Privy Council, which serves as the highest appeal court for many former British colonies, found today that automatic death sentences for convicted murderers did not violate the constitutions of Barbados and Trinidad.

The Council reversed its 2003 ruling that Trinidad’s mandatory death penalty for murder convictions was unconstitutional.

But the Privy Council said it would substitute a sentence of life imprisonment for anyone under the death sentence in Trinidad, arguing it would be unfair to deprive them of the benefit of last year’s ruling.

The Privy Council was considering appeals against death sentences by four convicted murderers: Lambert Watson in Jamaica, Lennox Ricardo Boyce and Jeffrey Joseph in Barbados, and Charles Matthew in Trinidad.

The Privy Council sat as a panel of nine judges, including eight English law lords and one Caribbean judge, Edward Zacca.

They ruled that Jamaica’s automatic death sentence for convicted murderers was inconsistent with section 17(1) of that country’s constitution, which provides that “no person shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading punishment or other treatment”.

The judges found that “basic humanity requires that the appellant should be given an opportunity to show why the sentence of death should not be passed on him”.

The ruling left it open to judges in Jamaica to impose the death sentence or a lesser penalty, depending on the relevant circumstances.

The judges ordered that Watson’s death sentence be set aside and that his case be sent back to the Supreme Court of Jamaica to decide what sentence should be pronounced. Watson was convicted five years ago of the 1997 murder of his daughter Georgina Watson and her mother Eugenie Samuels.

The Privy Council ruled by a majority of 5-4 that the mandatory death sentence for convicted murderers did not breach the constitutions of Barbados or Trinidad.

It found that the constitutions protected individuals from “inhuman or degrading punishment” or “cruel and unusual treatment or punishment”.

But it also found that both documents had provisions protecting laws already existing at the time the constitutions were written – such as those instituting the automatic death penalty for murderers – from being invalidated by the constitutions.