Oral Hendricks, who was sentenced to death on February 6, 1996, for murdering three children, aged two, four and seven years old, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment by acting Chief Justice Ian Chang late last month.
Justice Chang’s ruling following a motion, filed on behalf of Hendricks by attorney Nigel Hughes, stating that the death penalty was inhuman and degrading.
In a court order that was entered on December 28, 2012, it was stated that “upon reading the Notice of Motion on the part of the above named applicant and the affidavit of the said applicant it is hereby ordered by consent that the death sentence imposed on the above named applicant on February 6, 1996, and not executed, be commuted to life imprisonment.”
In the Notice of Motion Hughes had asked for the court to grant an order directing that the sentence of death be reduced to a sentence of life imprisonment. He also stated in the motion that “a declaration that the applicant possessed a legitimate expectation that the decision of the Human Rights Committee issued after consideration of the plaintiff’s complaint that the provision of the international covenant on Civil and Political Rights had been violated, would be implemented by the state.’’
In his affidavit, Hendricks stated that he is a condemned prisoner living on death row and has been living with a threat of execution since the day after the death penalty was imposed on him. His affidavit said, “on the 3rd of February 2000, a death warrant was read to me informing me that my execution would take place on the 7th of February 2000.”
Hendricks claimed he was never invited to any hearing of the Mercy Committee neither was he informed of the date on which the committee would meet to deliberate on his application. However, on February 6, his attorneys managed to obtain a stay of execution on his behalf.
Hendricks had been sentenced to death by Justice Cecil Kennard, after he was found guilty by a 12-member jury of drowning two children and slitting the throat of the third. Their bodies were fished out of a punt trench on December 12, 1992. He had appealed the sentence but that appeal was dismissed on July 6, 1997.
The then resident of Land-of-Canaan, East Bank Demerara, confessed orally and in writing to the crime. He had shared a common-law relationship with the children’s mother, Carol Braithwaite, who had a live-in job at Plaisance. Braithwaite and Hendricks were living together with the three children: two-year-old Travis Bumbury, four-year-old Althea George and seven-year-old Jason Braithwaite. However, after Carol Braithwaite began working she left the children in Hendricks’ care.
Hendricks, who confessed that he had killed the children because he was angry with their mother, had related that he threw Bumbury into the trench and watched him drown. He then threw George and watched her drown also. When he threw Braithwaite in, the boy managed to swim to the surface and attempted to escape. Hendricks had said that after he saw this, he took a knife he had in his pocket and slit the boy’s throat. Not satisfied, he had then held his head under the mud until he died.
During last year, five death row inmates Muntaz Ali, Noel Thomas, Lawrence Chan, Vivekanand Singh and Hafiz Hussein had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment by Justice Chang.
