On Wednesday, St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves spoke once more about the issue of the death penalty. Murder and treason are punishable by death in the multi-island nation, which carried out its last execution on February 13, 1995, when three individuals were executed only days after their death warrants were issued.
Gonsalves stated that he has pondered over the years whether or not certain crimes necessitate the death penalty.
“Unfortunately, both the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council decided practically that no one can be sent to the gallows anymore for murder. I have oscillated between the death penalty and no death penalty for a long time now over the last dozen or so years, and I came to the conclusion that there are particular offenses you need the death penalty for.”
The death penalty, according to Gonsalves, should be designated for murders, but not those of passion. The prime minister stated that differentiation was made in the Constitutional Reform Proposal; however, the people rejected it.
“There were many proposals, but this was a critical one to write into the constitution, something that was not there before, so we could carry out the death penalty in particular cases.” “We may have to go back to the people on that.”
In the meanwhile, Gonsalves said, current legal institutions would be utilized as SVG examines how it can bring up people, particularly young guys, to have the proper constraints so they don’t resort to the gun.
Since the Privy Council’s Pratt and Morgan ruling in 1993, a prisoner who has been sentenced to death for more than five years cannot be executed. The prisoner’s sentence is automatically changed to life in prison in this situation.
On March 11, 2002, the Privy Council’s Judicial Committee confirmed the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal’s (ECCA) April 2001 decision that the mandatory death penalty was unconstitutional and unanimously struck down the mandatory death penalty for murder in St. Vincent and six other countries.
During the constructive dialogue at the United Nations Universal Periodic Review in 2019, the government delegation noted that the country was “overwhelmingly supportive” of the death sentence, and so there were no plans to announce a moratorium on the death penalty.
