Former T&T attorney general wants death penalty implemented
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj has called on the government to ensure that the death penalty is carried out here, saying he could not understand why the problem of crime cannot be solved or reduced in Trinidad and Tobago.
“I could not understand why it is that the government is spending all this money on the Ministry of National Security but the country cannot be safe.
“It needs a situation in which the criminal must know that if he does the crime he or she will be detected, will be convicted and will be sentenced and the death penalty will be carried out,” he said.
‘The last time the death penalty was carried out in Trinidad and Tobago, was in 1999 when Maharaj served as attorney general in the Basdeo Panday administration.
Dole Chadee and members of his criminal gang were hanged over four days in June and July for the murder of one of their alleged associates and his family.
On July 28, 1999, Anthony Briggs and Wenceslaus James were hanged.
Trinidad and Tobago is among 13 Caribbean countries that retain the death penalty and it is estimated that between 59 and 80 prisoners are currently on death row in eight Caribbean countries.
Since the 1993 Pratt and Morgan ruling by the London-based Privy Council, which is still the final court for several Caribbean countries despite the establishment of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in 2001, the death penalty cannot be carried out if the prisoner has been under sentence of death for more than five years. In those cases the sentence is automatically commuted to life imprisonment.
In February 2011, the then People’s Partnership government sought to table legislation that would have allowed for the resumption of hangings, but the “Hanging Bill” as it was then termed, was defeated after the then government failed to get the required support from the opposition to amend the constitution.
Maharaj, speaking at the annual meeting of the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU), said the country does not need more laws to solve the crime problem.
“It may help, we have the laws, what we need is implementation and we need a passion,” he added.
So far this year more than 250 people have been murdered in Trinidad and Tobago.
