(Trinidad Express) It is more likely that a person will be struck by lightning in Trinidad and Tobago than it is that a killer will be executed.
This, according to data from an analysis of murders in Trinidad and Tobago by the Oxford Centre of Criminology in conjunction with the Law Faculty of the University of the West Indies.
Dr Arif Bulkan, a law lecturer at UWI, St Augustine, made the comment yesterday following the release of the analysis.
Bulkan made the statement during a debate on the death penalty which was held at the Noor Hassanali auditorium at UWI’s St Augustine campus yesterday.
The panel comprised Baroness Patricia Scotland of Asthal, a former attorney general of the United Kingdom, former president of Switzerland Ruth Dreifus and former attorney general Senior Counsel John Jeremie, along with Bulkan.
Jeremie was the first to speak on the debate. He began his presentation by paying homage to deceased former independent senator Prof John Spence.
Spence suffered a fatal heart attack last week at the age of 83.
Jeremie described Spence as a “mentor and exemplar”, who was “devoid of any trace of malice”.
In relation to the death penalty debate, Jeremie said he supported capital punishment because it was still the law of the land.
Jeremie left the function following his presentation to attend Spence’s funeral service.
Bulkan then addressed the crowd which consisted of mostly law students.
He referenced two “excellent studies” that were done by the Oxford Centre of Criminology in association with the UWI’s Law Faculty.
The studies were conducted by Prof Roger Hood and Dr Florence Seemungal.
The first study was an analysis of murders in Trinidad and Tobago over a five-year period from 1998 to 2002.
“In a nutshell what that analysis of murders revealed was that if you kill in Trinidad and Tobago, any kind of killing, the likelihood of you being executed is under five per cent,” Bulkan said.
“That is of all the killings that occurred in this period, less than five per cent resulted in a conviction for murder, that is, a conviction that could result in the death penalty.”
“The authors of the study called it a rare and arbitrary fate akin to or probably even less than being struck by lightning,” he added.
Bulkan said police classified killings in the country in five categories: gang- or drug- related killings, killing in the course of another crime such as a robbery, killing in the course of a domestic dispute, killing in the course of an attack such as a bar brawl and killings where the motives remain unknown also called body dump cases.
Bulkan said for the period covered in the study, 633 murders were committed with 280 of them remaining unsolved.
Of the 353 classified as solved only 33 resulted in a conviction for murder or manslaughter, Bulkan said.
Only two of the 33 were from the category drug- or gang-related, he said.
“The majority of murders that are actually cleared up and result in conviction in Trinidad and Tobago are the ones that are domestic disputes,” he said.
“The moral of this is that it is accepted that the death penalty as a deterrent is only effective if it is certain and if it is speedy. If out of 633 murders only 33 result in a conviction within seven or eight years of them happening, by no stretch of the English Language is it certain or speedy and this is why the authors classified it as a rare and arbitrary fate,” he said.
“If you are looking at the death penalty as a deterrent then clearly something is wrong if the only kinds of crimes that are actually resulting in a conviction, or the majority, are those that are committed in the spur of the moment, disputes between a husband and a wife or some kind of fight. But the ones that are carefully thought out, the ones that are related to drugs and gangs, there is absolutely no effect on them if only two of them over this period, two out of 633 murders result in a conviction for murder and not manslaughter,” he said.
Data from the Crime and Problem Analysis Branch (CAPA) of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) indicates that more than eight out of every ten murders committed over the past five years have remained unsolved.
CAPA statistics show that as many as 1,951 killers may have gotten away with murder in this country over the past five years without even being charged.
