The issue of hanging and whether it may serve as a deterrence to the present crime wave gripping St. Vincent (SVG) is being revisited yet again.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves hinted on WEFM’s Issue at Hand show on Sunday that all options within the framework of the Constitution are on the table.
“Before this incident (the mass shooting in Kingstown) had occurred, I had asked the Attorney General’s chambers to see how we could get something to deal with the matter legally and stay within the constitutional boundaries, but yet to pass a law in a way in which we could reduce the force of some of this judge-made law in relation to not being able to hang anybody”.
“We also have to do some amendments to certain laws and deal with this question of how some of the court systems function, the delays that are taking place, and the role of lawyers in those delays”, Gonsalves stated.
Gonsalves’ calls to reconsider the death penalty have been frequent in recent years.
In May of 2022, he said, “The practical abolition of the death penalty probably induced some people to use violence of an ultimate kind. There are certainly many people who feel strongly about it, and some might argue that in our situation, this is a matter that may be meritorious. The issue is one we will increasingly have to revisit.”
In April of 2023, it was stated, “I pondered over the years whether or not certain crimes necessitate the death penalty. For murder other than a crime of passion, you should get the death penalty”.
The Prime Minister also said that, in addition to the death penalty debate, there needs to be more consistency in sentencing among the magistracy.
“We have passed a law in relation to the regionalization of the magistracy, but it can’t be operationalized because not every country has passed the law. We have passed it, Antigua, and I think Montserrat, and I urge my colleagues to pass it”.
Following the brutal killings of Luann Roberts and Precious Williams, Vincentians have become increasingly vocal in advocating for the death penalty, as violence against women and gun violence have been on the rise in recent times.
Since the Privy Council’s Pratt and Morgan decision in 1993, the death penalty cannot be carried out on a prisoner who has been sentenced to death for more than five years. In this case, the prisoner’s sentence is automatically changed to life in prison.
On March 11, 2002, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council confirmed the April 2001 decision of the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal (ECCA) ruling that the mandatory death penalty was unconstitutional and unanimously struck down the mandatory death penalty for murder in St. Vincent and six other countries.
The government delegation to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review in 2019 noted during the constructive dialogue that the country was “overwhelmingly supportive’ of the death penalty; therefore, there were no plans to declare a moratorium on the death penalty.
The last hanging on the island was carried out in 1995.
Gonsalves said the book of Ecclesiastes teaches that we must try something in the morning and if it doesn’t work, try something else in the evening because “I don’t know which will succeed and which may not succeed or whether both will succeed”.
