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Saved from the gallows - a case study
published: Monday | December 1, 2008
The Editor, Sir:
The following is a letter from Lambert Brown responding to the letter from Carlos King, 'Hanging is not synonymous with capital punishment', which was published on Friday, November 28.
Hi Carlos,
Thanks for sending me a copy of your letter on capital punishment. Saw it also in The Gleaner today. I commend you for your advocacy and being bold in putting your opinions forward. Too many Jamaicans are afraid of doing so.
Your call for honest and dispassionate discussion has prompted a few comments from me on the article. I am personally ambivalent on the issue of the death penalty. Two individuals from the community I grew up in were hanged for separate crimes having been tried and found guilty. I happened to have known them personally, and one of them I can say I played cricket and other games with.
'Ah it this now'
I recall the media report of his last words as he was taken to the gallows - "ah it this now". I think both trials were fair and the correct verdict rendered. No problem with those. By the way, since those executions, crime has escalated manyfold. Those hangings certainly were no deterrent. I doubt the future executions by the State, whether by hanging, lethal injection, or worse, by the gruesome electric chair, will be a deterrent either
'A fantastic deterrent'
Think on what happened in Trinidad, in 1999, when the state hanged nine persons in just four days. That year there were 93 murders in Trinidad. Today, with 2008 not yet completed, there are already well over 400 murders in Trinidad. What a fantastic deterrent to murder, hanging (state execution) has become.
One lesson from the Trinidad experience is that hanging does not even lead to a reduction in murder, in particular, or crime, in general. If hanging is the answer to our crime problem, then the question must have been ridiculous.
In the late 1980s there was a heinous murder of a young schoolgirl in upper St Andrew. She was savagely raped, brutally murdered and her body dumped in a gully in the Constant Spring Area. There was, like now, a thunderous outcry for justice and for the death of the perpetrator(s).
One poor guy was arrested and charged for her murder. I recall scores of people wanting the police to release him to them so the mob could administer jungle justice and avenge the death of the schoolgirl. This poor guy was tried in the Home Circuit Court. After hearing evidence in the case, listening to defence, prosecution and the judge summing up the case, it went to the jury for deliberation and a verdict. Eleven of the 12 men and women of the jury voted for conviction.
Sufficient doubt
They were certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this poor guy was the murderer and he should be hanged. One single juror decided that there was sufficient doubt not to vote guilty. That juror refused to follow the majority and, under the law, no one could be found guilty of murder unless the verdict was unanimous. A hung jury was declared and a new trial ordered. Interestingly, one of Golding's six crime bills is intended to change that requirement for a unanimous verdict for murder.
At the retrial, the poor guy was allowed a new lawyer (Earl Witter, the current public defender) who was able to prove with the help of DNA that the strand of hair taken from the body of the young schoolgirl was certainly not that of the poor guy whom so many wanted to lynch and some voted to hang. But, for one juror, 'Shorty', the accused, would have been a convicted killer according to law, and, in our name, eligible to be hanged. Neither the Court of Appeal nor the Privy Council may have stopped that injustice because the triers of facts - the jurors - had listened to the facts and arrived at a fair verdict even though it was not a truthful verdict.
Evidence counts
In law, evidence is what counts, not truth, since truth may be evidence but evidence need not always be truth. Think of the case of the policeman who recently confessed and was imprisoned for presenting to court a false statement about an accused. But for his own confession this lie could have become evidence on which an innocent man became a convicted criminal for something he never did. Truth would have died and evidence lived.
Just yesterday, on Page A11 of The Gleaner (November 27), there appeared a shocking case of justice where an innocent Jamaican was sentenced to nine years' hard labour in prison. Luckily for him, 30 months after his conviction the Court of Appeal "was unable to discover a scintilla of evidence to show the basis upon which the learned trial judge arrived at that conclusion" of guilty.
A waste of time
It is against the background of the above why I think the debate in Parliament was a distraction and a waste of time. Wouldn't the time have been better spent debating why we can't catch and punished according to law - including capital punishment - the real killers of the over 500 children whose names are on the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation monument downtown? Catching and removing these devious animals parading as human beings would be a real deterrent to murder, in particular, and crime, in general. Let's use our brains and muscles, aided by the best investigative tools available, to fight crime rather than the mere feel-good but ineffective emotional outburst that polluted the nation's Parliament in recent times.
labpoyh@yahoo.com, columns@gleanerjm.com
published: Monday | December 1, 2008
The Editor, Sir:
The following is a letter from Lambert Brown responding to the letter from Carlos King, 'Hanging is not synonymous with capital punishment', which was published on Friday, November 28.
Hi Carlos,
Thanks for sending me a copy of your letter on capital punishment. Saw it also in The Gleaner today. I commend you for your advocacy and being bold in putting your opinions forward. Too many Jamaicans are afraid of doing so.
Your call for honest and dispassionate discussion has prompted a few comments from me on the article. I am personally ambivalent on the issue of the death penalty. Two individuals from the community I grew up in were hanged for separate crimes having been tried and found guilty. I happened to have known them personally, and one of them I can say I played cricket and other games with.
'Ah it this now'
I recall the media report of his last words as he was taken to the gallows - "ah it this now". I think both trials were fair and the correct verdict rendered. No problem with those. By the way, since those executions, crime has escalated manyfold. Those hangings certainly were no deterrent. I doubt the future executions by the State, whether by hanging, lethal injection, or worse, by the gruesome electric chair, will be a deterrent either
'A fantastic deterrent'
Think on what happened in Trinidad, in 1999, when the state hanged nine persons in just four days. That year there were 93 murders in Trinidad. Today, with 2008 not yet completed, there are already well over 400 murders in Trinidad. What a fantastic deterrent to murder, hanging (state execution) has become.
One lesson from the Trinidad experience is that hanging does not even lead to a reduction in murder, in particular, or crime, in general. If hanging is the answer to our crime problem, then the question must have been ridiculous.
In the late 1980s there was a heinous murder of a young schoolgirl in upper St Andrew. She was savagely raped, brutally murdered and her body dumped in a gully in the Constant Spring Area. There was, like now, a thunderous outcry for justice and for the death of the perpetrator(s).
One poor guy was arrested and charged for her murder. I recall scores of people wanting the police to release him to them so the mob could administer jungle justice and avenge the death of the schoolgirl. This poor guy was tried in the Home Circuit Court. After hearing evidence in the case, listening to defence, prosecution and the judge summing up the case, it went to the jury for deliberation and a verdict. Eleven of the 12 men and women of the jury voted for conviction.
Sufficient doubt
They were certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this poor guy was the murderer and he should be hanged. One single juror decided that there was sufficient doubt not to vote guilty. That juror refused to follow the majority and, under the law, no one could be found guilty of murder unless the verdict was unanimous. A hung jury was declared and a new trial ordered. Interestingly, one of Golding's six crime bills is intended to change that requirement for a unanimous verdict for murder.
At the retrial, the poor guy was allowed a new lawyer (Earl Witter, the current public defender) who was able to prove with the help of DNA that the strand of hair taken from the body of the young schoolgirl was certainly not that of the poor guy whom so many wanted to lynch and some voted to hang. But, for one juror, 'Shorty', the accused, would have been a convicted killer according to law, and, in our name, eligible to be hanged. Neither the Court of Appeal nor the Privy Council may have stopped that injustice because the triers of facts - the jurors - had listened to the facts and arrived at a fair verdict even though it was not a truthful verdict.
Evidence counts
In law, evidence is what counts, not truth, since truth may be evidence but evidence need not always be truth. Think of the case of the policeman who recently confessed and was imprisoned for presenting to court a false statement about an accused. But for his own confession this lie could have become evidence on which an innocent man became a convicted criminal for something he never did. Truth would have died and evidence lived.
Just yesterday, on Page A11 of The Gleaner (November 27), there appeared a shocking case of justice where an innocent Jamaican was sentenced to nine years' hard labour in prison. Luckily for him, 30 months after his conviction the Court of Appeal "was unable to discover a scintilla of evidence to show the basis upon which the learned trial judge arrived at that conclusion" of guilty.
A waste of time
It is against the background of the above why I think the debate in Parliament was a distraction and a waste of time. Wouldn't the time have been better spent debating why we can't catch and punished according to law - including capital punishment - the real killers of the over 500 children whose names are on the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation monument downtown? Catching and removing these devious animals parading as human beings would be a real deterrent to murder, in particular, and crime, in general. Let's use our brains and muscles, aided by the best investigative tools available, to fight crime rather than the mere feel-good but ineffective emotional outburst that polluted the nation's Parliament in recent times.
labpoyh@yahoo.com, columns@gleanerjm.com
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