EVERY TIME I hear of the death penalty something like ice freezes my heart. I can’t believe that in the 21st century amidst the abolition of slavery, that there are citizens who want to satisfy their hearts by seeing a human being choked to death by a piece of rope.
These advocates of the death penalty don’t know what it’s like for a condemned human being to be incarcerated from their mother, daughter and lover for five painful years awaiting trial with many judicial hiccups.
The Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persaud Bissessar’s administration is so anxious to satisfy the electorate by carrying out judicial executions that a member of Cabinet Jack Warner said:
“I told my attorney general that he must tell us what are some of the things we must do to free ourselves from these international organisations who try to frustrate the law of the land.
”Just like Psalm 121, I want to say thanks for the ruling in Pratt and Morgan, that those on death row can lift their “eyes unto the hills from whence cometh the help” of the Privy Council.
I want our local and regional executives to know that they ought to respect the rights of death row persons.
SYLVESTER FORDE, (UWI student)
