New legal procedures outlining how judges will go about sentencing convicted murderers in the future could be made more clear by the end of the week, The Bahama Journal has learned.
It’s a move that should bring more clarity to the sentencing of convicted murderers since a Privy Council decision last week abolished the mandatory death sentence in The Bahamas, ruling that each case should be considered separately and that a judge should be able to consider the mitigating circumstances of each case before handing down a sentence.
Up until the ruling last Wednesday, anyone convicted of murder in The Bahamas was automatically sentenced to hang. The Privy Council ruled the mandatory death sentence unconstitutional; however, it upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty.
Discussions between the Attorney General’s Office and the judiciary were expected to begin this week to determine proper sentencing procedures for judges, and according to a well-placed source “officials may have something to say” about what they have come up with by the end of this week.
It is understood that Attorney General Allyson-Maynard Gibson met with Chief Justice Sir Burton Hall on Monday to discuss the matter.
Last week, Minister Maynard-Gibson announced that as a result of the Privy Council’s ruling, all death sentences would be “swiftly” remitted to the Supreme Court for consideration, and procedures would have to be put in place for judges to determine sentencing.
If a conviction is handed down before the procedures are put in place, President of the Bahamas Bar Association, Wayne Munroe, said that Supreme Court judges would seek assistance from the defence and prosecution counsel.
“No laws are [currently] in place for a procedure,” noted Mr. Munroe. “That leaves us somewhere only the Privy Council knows.”
Mr. Munroe also pointed out that while the Privy Council said it was remitting the cases of Forrester Bowe Jr. and Trono Davis back to the Supreme Court, the council did not express an opinion on what would happen if Bowe and Davis were again sentenced to death, because it was not deciding that at the time.
“In that instance they were saying we would want that argued below [lower court] first. Well perhaps they should have had [the mandatory death sentence] argued below first, starting from the Supreme Court that actually hears cases and is a trial court. The Court of Appeal is not a trial court, the Privy Council is not a trial court. The Privy Council chose to be a trial court in this instance and we may reap the firestorm of that,” he said.
Last week’s ruling has sparked a heated debate among the Bahamian public and local lawyers. Many agree that the ruling could severely frustrate the country’s judicial system.
The ruling has prompted Progressive Liberal Party Senator Damien Gomez to call for an enquiry into the procedures and practices of the Attorney General’s Office and all government departments.
He said that given the ruling, all of the 16 executions carried out since July 1973 could be considered “unlawful killings at the hands of the state.” Mr. Gomez said an enquiry would ascertain the entire circumstances in which “we have bungled the law and in the process of bungling, 16 persons have been killed.”
He also believes that the ruling may have significant ramifications for other areas of the law, and not only the mandatory death sentence
Responding to Mr. Gomez’s concerns, Minister Maynard-Gibson reiterated yesterday that the death penalty has not been abolished and that justice would be swift.
“I would like to make it clear that the Privy Council has not abolished the death penalty,” said Minister Maynard-Gibson.
“What it has stated is that the question is whether or not the death penalty ought to be given in a particular circumstance. That is a matter for the judge. [The Privy Council] also ordered that the cases they were hearing should be sent back to the Supreme Court for sentencing. We are moving quickly to get those matters back to the Supreme Court for sentencing, as directed by the Privy Council, and all of the other matters on death row, we are having them quickly sent back to the Supreme Court as well.”
By: Erica Wells, The Bahama Journal
