THE EDITOR, Sir:WITH REFERENCE to Mr. Clive Mullings' call on the Government to enforce the death penalty or abolish the law, I wish to remind fellow Jamaicans of the words of the late Morris Cargill, published on February 11, 1999. These words are as true today as they were then:
"The Government is both weak and vacillating. It is weak because it has neither the courage to abolish hanging, yet has neither the courage nor the will to carry it out. This folly is aided and abetted by a bunch of bleeding hearts and their legal lackeys. A lawyer is obviously entitled to fight as hard as he can for the acquittal of his client. But I have no admiration for a lawyer who knowing that his client has been justly convicted of murder, nevertheless, uses every ridiculous appeal to frustrate the legal sentence of death. I am not surprised that murder is the only growth industry we have in Jamaica at present. It is time that all the nonsense stopped and that our law should not be frustrated."
How did we get to this sorry state? When Parliament debated the death penalty in 1979, on the basis of a conscience vote, the House of Representatives voted to retain the penalty and the Senate voted for a limited suspension.
It is time to have another conscience vote in Parliament. This time it should be on the resumption of hanging. When we see how the individuals in Gordon House vote then we will see those who side with the majority of Jamaicans on this issue and those who do not. This would be instructive.
I am, etc.,
WINNIE ANDERSON-BROWN
winab@cwjamaica.com
Bagatelle District
Ashley P.A., Clarendon
