Our Caribbean bishops said in their pastoral letter on Capital Punishment (2000): “The prophetic voice of the Church must be heard especially in times of moral and social crisis…regardless of the potential unpopularity of our Gospel message…Capital punishment symbolises a form of despair for the effective reform of persons.”
And in their Pastoral Letter The Gift of Life, the AEC Bishops expressed their “firm desire that the leaders and people of Caribbean society move toward the total abolition of the Death Penalty. Therefore, we should place emphasis on the rehabilitation of the offender rather than on his/her elimination”.
I was invited, as Chair of the CCSJ and as a member of the Greater Caribbean for Life (GCL), to present a paper at the 5th World Congress against the Death Penalty which took place in Madrid from June 12-15. (See CCSJ’s website for my presentation.) The Congress was organised by the French association Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM), in partnership with the World Coalition against the Death Penalty and with the support of Spain, Norway, Switzerland and France. More than 1,500 people from over 90 countries attended – including Nobel Laureates, politicians, and representatives from civil society, Bar Associations, and the media.
Currently, 140 countries around the world have abolished the death penalty either in law or practice. These include eight countries that have abolished it for common crimes and 35 countries that have implemented a moratorium on executions for at least 10 years. While there is a global trend towards abolition, 13 of the 58 countries that retain the death penalty belong to the Caribbean.
In 2012, at least 682 executions were known to have been carried out worldwide in 21 countries (two more than in 2011). This does not include executions in countries such as China where data is not available. Eighteen states in the US have now abolished the death penalty.
Also, since 1973 over 140 persons have been exonerated and freed from Death Row in the US due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. Many others were executed before their innocence was proved. Some of those who were freed were present at the Congress, as were some victims who support the abolition of the death penalty.
Messages of support for the Congress came from a number of prominent individuals, including Pope Francis and Desmond Tutu. As Desmond Tutu said in his message titled Breaking the dreadful doctrine of revenge: “There is no justice in killing in the name of justice, and no godliness in exacting vengeance…Universal abolition of the death penalty is not a pipe dream. It is a necessity. Hope is our strength…”
While the Catholic Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, our 1997 Catechism (2267) states: “If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect peoples’ safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.” The Catechism draws on Blessed Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical The Gospel of Life, in which he said: “Today…the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically non-existent (56).”
The reason more focus is kept on the tongue, swallowed and melts gradually in the mouth. amerikabulteni.com viagra generic uk Occasionally a person might get a local twitch viagra cheap price response from this compression which should soon ease as the session continues. Some conditions like atherosclerosis can be very dangerous as they lead to cialis online mastercard poor bed performances as sexual arousal is hampered. The sperm that makes it in levitra without prescription amerikabulteni.com that stratum are removed and introduced into the uterine cavity. Let me make it clear that the CCSJ and GCL deeply sympathise with victims of crime and continue to campaign and work towards better responses to the needs of victims and their families. However, we believe that the death penalty does not make societies safer. Research, including that of Prof David Greenberg, New York University, and Prof Biko Agozino, Virginia Tech University – who analysed 50 years of crime statistics in T&T from 1955, finds that the death penalty is not a deterrent. See Executions, Imprisonment and Crime in Trinidad and Tobago. (bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/09/20/bjc.azr072).
We would do well to study and act on the recommendations contained in the 2012 UNDP Report entitled Human Development and the Shift to Better Citizen Security. The report reviews the current state of crime, as well as the national and regional policies and programmes to address crime in seven English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries, including T&T. A key recommendation is that our Governments should seek to get “a better balance between legitimate law enforcement and preventive measures, with a stronger focus on prevention rather than repressive only measures”.
The UNDP report highlights “the need to beef up the public institutions’ capacity to tackle crime and violence – including the criminal justice system – while boosting preventive measures. It contains recommendations to: prevent youth crime involvement by offering education and employment opportunities, especially to the marginalised urban poor; shift from a State protection approach to one focusing on citizen security and participation; and promote a law enforcement that is fair, accountable and more respectful of human rights”.
The last person to be hanged in T&T was Anthony Briggs in 1999. The last person to be hanged in the English-speaking Caribbean was Charles Laplace in St Kitts & Nevis in 2008. The ruling of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in the 1993 case of Pratt and Morgan vs AG of Jamaica has had the effect of making death sentences extremely difficult to carry out in the region. The JCPC ruled that in any case where the execution of a person is to take place more than five years after sentencing, there would be strong grounds for believing that the delay is such as to constitute “inhumane or degrading punishment or other treatment”. In such cases the death penalty should be commuted to life imprisonment.
Barbados has amended its Constitution to nullify the effects of this case and Jamaica has recently taken action to do so also. T&T’s Constitution (Amendment) (Capital Offences) Bill 2011 was not passed in Parliament this year. This would have allowed for categories of murder to be introduced and for the resumption of hanging – nullifying the effects of Pratt and Morgan. As Amnesty International (AI) states, it “would have enabled death sentences to be carried out while appeals before international bodies were pending, against international human rights law related to fair trial”. AI’s two recent documents, Turning the tide in the Caribbean towards an end to the death Penalty and Death penalty in the English-speaking Caribbean, a Human Rights issue, are worth reading.
Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados are the only English-speaking Caribbean countries that retain the mandatory death penalty for murder. However, since 2009 Barbados pledged to remove mandatory sentencing from its legislation. At the Congress in Madrid there was a call for Barbados and T&T to remove the mandatory death penalty for murder as it does not allow the possibility of taking into account the defendant’s personal circumstances or the circumstances of the particular crime.
Most of the Caribbean retentionist countries have consistently voted against the UN Resolution for a moratorium on the death penalty – with a view to its eventual abolition. October 10, 2013 will mark World Day against the Death Penalty. The focus will be on the Caribbean.
I end with the words of the US Bishops: “The death penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life.” Our world needs healing. Let us pray for the renewal of hearts and minds and for a reduction in crime and violence. God’s plan is for us to live in peace and harmony with each other and with all of His Creation.
