Robert Buddan, Contributor
BRUCE GOLDING has declared the Jamaica Labour Party's support for the death penalty, saying that a government of his party would resume hanging immediately. The party will also make national security its priority.
Prime Minister Patterson has invited Mr. Golding to discuss a common position between Government and Opposition on the death penalty.
News reports last week said that a majority of the Members of Parliament on both sides support the death penalty, but public declarations from both parties is something new.
The People's National Party (PNP) did make it a campaign issue in 2002 but the JLP only offered to 'Increase penalties for terrorist activities and other serious crimes'. The National Democratic Movement (NDM) had not made it a part of its 1997 election platform under Mr. Golding's leadership.
The JLP had stridently objected to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) becoming Jamaica's final appellate court on the grounds that it was intended to be a hanging court, a backdoor to the death penalty. It had the support of Jamaicans for Justice and the Bar Association.
The PNP had not formed a
sufficient consensus on hanging in the 1990s. Mr. Patterson had acknowledged that different positions existed in the party andgovernment.
However, by 2002 things began to change. The PNP declared that it would resume hanging if it were re-elected. Shortly after the election, the JLP's Shadow Minister on National Security, Derrick Smith, seemed to indicate support within his camp by telling the Government to get on with it.
Disagreement over the status of the CCJ stood in the way. As recently as February 2005, Mr. Patterson told interim Opposition Leader, Dr. Ken Baugh, that both sides should determine whether Jamaica should abolish the death penalty or retain it in some form, as a way to find a breakthrough on the CCJ.
THE CCJ AND THE DEATH PENALTY
In Pratt and Morgan, the UK Privy Council had ruled that keeping someone on death row for more than five years constituted cruel and inhuman punishment. It required that in such cases, the sentence be commuted to life imprisonment. Mr. Golding intends to exploit this fallacious logic. He would comply with the Privy Council by applying quick death, not what the Privy Council intended but which its ruling permits.
Yet, Mr. Golding can do even better than this by joining with Government's proposal to amend the Constitution so that Jamaica would have the authority to determine how much time convicts had to appeal to a final court. This could be less than five years.
Mr. Golding need not try to dance around Pratt and Morgan. Jamaica has the power to make its own laws. First, we can reduce the time period for appeals, and since hanging is no longer an issue that should divide the parties on the CCJ, the JLP can now agree to use it as our final appellate court. Since Mr. Golding still wants a referendum on this he should now say if his party would support having the CCJ as Jamaica's final court in that referendum. There seems to be no further basis on which it should not.
Besides, with or without the CCJ, Jamaicans can be hanged anyway. In 2003, the UK Privy Council ruled that it would not hear appeals against extradition. This means that if a Jamaican is wanted in the United States to answer for a crime for which he faces the death penalty, he cannot appeal that a U.S. court would endanger his right to life. Similarly, if a Jamaican is wanted in any CARICOM territory, and the death penalty is applicable in all (except Suriname and Haiti), he can be hanged in those countries.
Jamaicans, in fact, are subject to the death penalty in over 80 countries in which it applies. Since both parties agree to the death penalty, a referendum becomes superfluous and an unnecessary delay. Furthermore, since many of the countries that apply the death penalty have broken down judicial systems it would be better to apply our own courts, which are superior to many, including the CCJ. Even the United States court system makes erroneous judgments.
We should concentrate our energies on establishing systems for foolproof intelligence and solid evidence. If we must have a referendum, it might make better sense to give the CCJ a chance to work and have one a few years down the road to determine if it should retain appellate jurisdiction.
THE DEATH PENALTY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The JLP now supports the death penalty, the CCJ is no longer an issue as a hanging court, and Jamaicans are subject to the death penalty in half of the countries of the world anyway. There is still the objection that the state should not take the life of citizens. Human rights, for me, mean that no one should take another's life except as a judicial form of punishment. Criminal citizens, however, have their own practices. They wantonly take the life of other citizens subject to no standards. Criminals apply the death penalty without having to prove guilt. They make no distinction between capital and non-capital punishment. It does not matter if the person is rich or poor. The victim's gender does not matter. Where does the real threat to life come from - the state or the (criminal) citizen?
Churches, schools, homes and business places are not safe havens from criminals. Children are callously murdered, as are the elderly. Criminals sentence citizens to death and carry out that sentence without mercy. Over a thousand Jamaicans have been sent to the gallows already this year. It cannot be good for human rights standards when criminals kill citizens but citizens cannot apply like punishment. In an ideal world, the death penalty should not apply, but we are far from that ideal.
We have entered a new era of transnational criminality that threatens our very systems of democracy, economic production, and personal safety.
In the UN's most recent human development index, Jamaica slipped 19 places largely because the state of human security has declined so badly. Human development suffers when the environment for personal safety deteriorates. We must ask which matters more - the human rights of criminals or the human
development of law-abiding citizens.
Crime and violence have a
multiplier effect, not just on the economy and on human security, but because they lead to more dangerous and daring crimes as well. These involve kidnapping, extortion, the targeted killing of policemen and the random killing of children. If recent dangers to Olivia Grange point to a new trend, violence might be turned against our Members of Parliament in much the same way that criminals assassinate politicians and judges in other countries.
In fact, if we agree to apply the death penalty, criminals will be judged by more humane standards than they apply to innocent citizens. There is precedent (in Jamaica and elsewhere) for the death penalty to exempt women, minors, and the mentally handicapped and, of course, the death penalty will only apply to capital as against non-capital crimes. Criminals make no such exemptions for their victims. Yet, we should also consider broadening the net of capital crimes to include murder of children, and for relevance to Operation Kingfish, the leaders of gangs proven to be involved in murder, extortion, or drug trafficking.
You can snd your comments to: Robrt.uddan@uwimona.edu.jm
