No to hangings

A resumption of hangings is not the right response to the recent spike in murders in Barbados, two prominent lawyers declared on Wednesday.

Past president of the Barbados Bar Association Andrew Pilgrim, Q.C. and fellow attorney-at-law Senator Gregory Nicholls rejected the idea of capital punishment as a deterrent while discussing constitutional reform on VOB’s Down to Brasstacks call-in programme.

There have been no state executions in Barbados in almost four decades, and the death penalty was removed as automatic punishment for murder in 2019, a year after the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruled that the mandatory death sentence was unconstitutional. However, High Court judges still have the discretion to impose that sentence for the capital offence.

Responding to a caller who raised the issue in light of gun killings in recent weeks, Pilgrim categorically rejected the idea that the courts should go that route, saying that such a move would be abhorrent.

“The idea of a state premeditatedly killing people is something that I abhor and that is because I believe in life, I don’t believe in death. I don’t believe in killing people deliberately by the way of planning, and there is nothing that can be more corrupt than a state planning to kill its own citizenry,” the Queen’s Counsel said.

“I am very wary of these types of things because in every system [globally] where people are killed regularly as a result of prosecution, it’s the poorest people in society who are killed….  Worldwide, that demographic is true. People who can afford good lawyers do not get the death penalty, people who can wield certain levels of power don’t get the death penalty. People who are enemies of the state get the death penalty, people who are poor get the death penalty.”

Also expressing his disagreement with any return to capital punishment, Nicholls pointed out that there have been cases where after a person is executed by the state new evidence comes to light that has cleared those individuals of wrongdoing.

“We get it wrong sometimes. The court system will not always get it right and we have seen time and time again people exonerated long after they have been executed by the state. Evidence turns up, a witness was telling lies and these things happen…. How then can you repay a life that the state took away in those circumstances?” he contended.

“I feel that when somebody kills somebody they should go to prison for a long time, not 12 years for manslaughter as the guidelines would tell you.”

Against the background of concern about people charged with murder and other violent crimes being granted bail by the courts, Pilgrim also addressed allegations that lawyers were often to blame for repeated adjournments in cases.

He said nothing could be further from the truth and lamented that the wheels of justice were still moving far too slowly in getting defendants to trial.

“Lawyers cannot be [at] fault if cases are being adjourned for years and years. I am not saying that a lawyer can’t get two and three adjournments but a lawyer cannot get five years’ worth of adjournments,” Pilgrim insisted.

“So that when you find a case in which a person is on bail for murder – in other words, I sit in prison for three years waiting on my trial for murder, three years later I get bail – what would be the priority of the DPP’s [Director of Public Prosecution’s] Office… not to get me tried?” he questioned.

shamarblunt@barbadostoday.bb