“In the Commission`s view, the 1976 Constitution protects existing laws, including the mandatory death penalty, from constitutional challenge. As a result, the State of Trinidad and Tobago has legal regulations that require the imposition of an often disproportionate and unfair penalty. The verdict is internationally regarded as a cruel and unusual punishment. The State does not dispute that characterization. [96] In addition, police records show that almost all suspicious deaths in Trinidad and Tobago are recorded as murders, with the murder rate according to Hood and Seemungal (2006) being exaggerated, while the homicide rate is significantly underestimated. In addition, these records also show that only about four percent (4%) of suspicious deaths for the period 1998 to 2002 were recorded as manslaughter. Statistics from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service in 2011 recorded the number of homicide victims at 472 deaths, a rate of 35.2 per 100,000 population (UNODC, 2012). 2018 was a year of many firsts for the death penalty in the Caribbean. The 1976 Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago preserves various fundamental rights, including the right of the individual to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment or punishment. However, these constitutional guarantees are subject to a “safeguard clause” that replaces them in favour of pre-1976 laws, such as the mandatory death penalty, a penalty introduced under colonial rule. In that appeal, Chandler raised a constitutional challenge to the mandatory death penalty, and the main issue is the relationship between Articles 4, 5 and 6 of the 1976 Constitution.
In its judgment, the nine-member Privy Council found that it was not persuaded to depart from its earlier decision and that the principle of legal certainty requires that there be very valid reasons before departing from such a decision. With the increase in the number of murders in the country, there have been calls not only from the current government, but also from the public, to reintroduce the death penalty in order to combat the escalation of crime and thus punish the perpetrators of their acts. This article first attempts to highlight the current state of the law regarding the death penalty. It also examines the persistent policy obstacles preventing the State from applying the death penalty. However, these obstacles, while difficult for any State intending to retain the death penalty, can be removed and reforms can be made possible to make the death penalty effective. Without proper assessments, people with potential mental disabilities inevitably fall through the cracks, and it is all too common to find prisoners with serious mental health problems on death row. The mandatory death penalty is very worrisome because the judge has no discretion in imposing the death penalty. Trinidad and Tobago is one of the last Caribbean countries to retain this colonial relic, in violation of its international obligations.
In 1991, the British government extended an ordinance abolishing the death penalty for murder to its Caribbean territories. Independent Caribbean Commonwealth countries such as Trinidad and Tobago have not been affected by this change in the law and retain the death penalty. Trinidad and Tobago, with more than 30 on death row, is one of only two Caribbean countries (the other being Barbados) to maintain a mandatory death penalty for murder – a hangover of British colonial rule. Last year`s global figures on the use of the death penalty speak for themselves: it is only a matter of time before the death penalty is written into the history books. In the Caribbean, the number of people sentenced to death has fallen by more than 70 per cent over the past 25 years, reflecting judicial standards set by regional and international bodies and the gradual decline of the use of the death penalty as a punitive option. With 80 people on death row in just five countries, there is no doubt that the death penalty is also underway in this region. The main method of killing in Trinidad and Tobago is the weapon (CSO, 2011), and there is currently a thriving firearms trade in Trinidad and Tobago with the increased influx of illegal firearms (Figueira, 2002) as well as homemade firearms into the country, which is inevitably reflected in police statistics when weapons are recovered. Second only to firearm-related homicides is the use of blades, knives and other edged weapons. This is followed by the use of blunt instruments and instruments for strangulation. In December 1980, Lord Carrington, then Foreign Secretary, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stating: “Local sentiment in areas where the death penalty is retained is generally strong in favour of its application. In 1978, a frigate was sent to the British Virgin Islands in anticipation of riots when the governor decided to commute [the death sentence]. Although the Privy Council concluded in 2003 that the mandatory death penalty for murder violated the constitutional right not to be cruelly and unusibly punished, the “austerity clause” meant that mandatory sentencing could only be abolished by passing legislation.
With the increase in the number of murders in the country, there have been calls not only from the current government, but also from the public, to reintroduce the death penalty in order to combat the escalation of crime and thus punish the perpetrators of their acts. In 2011, the current government submitted to Parliament a bill to reform the Constitution with regard to the introduction of the death penalty. However, the law was rejected because it allegedly facilitated a number of human rights violations under international law. Although the Privy Council has ruled that the mandatory death penalty for murder is unconstitutional (see more here), in Trinidad and Tobago the penalty is protected by an “austerity clause” in Article 6 of the Constitution, which states: “Nothing in sections 4 or 5 [recognition and protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms] invalidates any existing law.” Recent Privy Council cases have set legal precedents against imposing the death penalty on people with intellectual disabilities such as extremely low IQs. Trinidad and Tobago is one of the few countries in the world where the mandatory death penalty still applies to those convicted of murder. It is the only Caribbean country to uphold this mandatory sentence after the Caribbean court ruled in June 2018 that the same sentence was unconstitutional in Barbados. The mandatory death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago is provided for in section 4 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1925, which states: “Every person convicted of murder shall be liable to the death penalty.” After independence in 1962, the mandatory death penalty for murder remained in force. The state`s last death sentences came in 1999, when a well-known drug lord (Nankissoon Boodram) and his gang of eight, along with another convicted murderer (Anthony Briggs), were hanged for the murders.