On Friday a letter written by former President Donald Ramotar was published in this newspaper. He bemoaned the fact that all the calls for constitutional reform had been “woefully short” on specifics, and put forward a concrete issue which in his view was in need of consideration. This is not, it must be said, the kind of subject which those who ruminate on the constitution are wont to concern themselves with, and should it ever come to Parliament for passage it might even – although not necessarily − require a free vote. While that is not the central question in this case, it might be observed that it constitutes a bonus when the representatives attached to the two leviathans forget their partisan associations and vote according to conscience.
Whether Mr Ramotar was testing the waters for the party, or was simply expressing a personal view is not known, but either way it does not really matter. His position was that the time had come when capital punishment should be abolished. As it is there have been no executions in Guyana since August 1997, when then President Samuel Hinds was in office following the death of Dr Cheddi Jagan.
What is often forgotten is that there were no executions when Forbes Burnham was in power either, although it seems he did sign death warrants in the early eighties which were never put into effect. Hangings resumed when Desmond Hoyte came to office, one of the two persons who were first executed being what was then known as a ‘kick-down-the-door’ bandit. By that time Guyana no longer had an official executioner, and the person who discharged that function in Trinidad had to be brought in for the purpose. Cheddi Jagan also signed death warrants, the best known relating to a man who killed a Sacred Heart schoolboy whose bicycle he stole.
The fact that there have been no executions since 1997, although death sentences continue to be imposed by the courts, is probably a consequence of the personal views of a succession of presidents, although it must be said that the case of Yassin and Thomas has made the carrying out of the death penalty a more complicated matter.
Abdool Salim Yassin and Noel Thomas were convicted in 1988 of the murder of the former’s younger brother the previous year. Yassin’s father had left most of his assets in his will to the younger boy, which is why Abdool Salim hired Thomas as a hit man. There can be few cases in the local courts which are so associated with such a slew of legal challenges, and the pair won a second trial for themselves in 1992 when they were again found guilty. While they came close to execution on more than one occasion, they managed to evade the hangman’s noose, their most famous appeal being to the UN Human Rights Commit-tee in respect of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The grounds they cited were cruel and inhumane punishment because they had been on death row for more than five years. While the committee accepted this, somewhat inexplicably, perhaps, it recommended their release, which clearly the government could not accede to.
They remained in jail, with then Chief Justice (ag) Ian Chang commuting their sentence to life imprisonment in 2012. Attorney Nigel Hughes had told this newspaper at the time that this decision was in line with Privy Council and CCJ rulings where the amount of time prisoners spent on death row was a factor. Yassin, however, died that same year, while Thomas was finally parolled in 2018 after 31 years in prison. Dr Jagan withdrew Guyana from the International Covenant following the Yassin and Thomas case.
Mr Ramotar’s arguments against the death penalty were of a more general character, and included the contention that capital punishment did not prevent murders from occurring. This is perfectly true, of course. Amnesty International has found, for example, that the murder rates in US states which do not have the death penalty are no higher than those which do. However, the former president might have a problem persuading members of his own constituency that capital punishment has no deterrent effect. Older members will undoubtedly assail him with their perception that after Hoyte brought back hanging, the kick-down-the-door banditry stopped. In this one very limited, localised case there might be a measure of truth to this. But there is a caveat.
Hoyte started by reading the riot act to the police force, insisting that they caught some of the perpetrators. If no one was caught and then convicted – and no one had been up to then − no one could be executed. And that is the point about deterrence: the bulk of serious criminals especially, must be caught, and once caught convictions must be fairly certain. Capital punishment doesn’t matter to brutal offenders; the degree of risk in relation to being caught does. It might be added that unlike the earlier bandits, many present-day violent criminals have seriously impaired judgement because of drug-taking, and they will not be dissuaded from killing by any threat of the death penalty in any case.
So while Mr Ramotar is right that resuming executions will not affect the murder rate here, the government which he supports will have to ensure that the police force is a great deal more effective than it is at present, and that prosecutions are more competently conducted if he wants to give the public a greater sense of security. In the end, as said earlier, bringing the violent crime rate down depends on catching the culprits and ensuring they go to jail, not on hanging them. As long as the crime rate continues on its present trajectory, however, there is some question as to whether the population will unreservedly support the abolition argument, no matter what the statistics from many parts of the world say.
It might be remembered, for example, that before former President Hoyte resumed hanging, he asked Dr Tara Singh of the UG Sociology Department to conduct a survey on capital punishment. The results were unequivocal; there was great support for it across the races. One suspects that even today the results might be somewhat similar, if less dramatic, although one would hope that the younger generation might be more forward looking.
The former head of state also raised the matter of miscarriages of justice, where innocent people have been hanged. No one knows how many cases of this have occurred here, although the late attorney Miles Fitzpatrick made private reference to one such account. However, the phenomenon is well known in other jurisdictions, such as the US and UK. In the case of the latter country, it was the miscarriages in relation to Timothy Evans and others, which made the British population more amenable to the suspension of capital punishment in 1965; it was abolished four years later. “One innocent person being sent to his/her death is far too much,” wrote Mr Ramotar. Indeed he is right.
He also adverted to what he called the “moral argument” that if the taking of another person’s life is wrong, then for the state to take the life of anyone cannot be right. He did, however, acknowledge the depth of hurt families who had lost a loved one experienced, and for some of them the immediate response was to “do them back.” This is perhaps the local expression of the lex talionis principle, to which some religious groups still adhere, although religion does not dictate the framework of the state.
Against the revenge principle the former head of state prefers the argument that one of the duties we have as a nation is to further “humanize our society”. It was a version of this which inspired many British parliamentarians to support the suspension of abolition in 1965 on a free vote. In subsequent years it became clear that the House of Commons was ahead of the electorate in terms of its thinking. Our parliamentarians too, even under the current constitution are representatives, not delegates, and they are in a position to take the most advanced and ethical decisions in the interest of the nation, even if the populace is not in total agreement. The MPs should try and explain the issues involved and persuade their supporters, but on a fundamental human rights question such as this, they should not be overruled by them.
Only time will tell whether our National Assembly is prepared to respond positively to Mr Ramotar’s call that “we must be humane, we must demonstrate to our people humaneness. Setting the correct example is important in moulding a free and democratic country.”
