BARBADOS’ HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY this morning was moving to stop the death penalty from being compulsory for murder.
Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite, who piloted a bill to make this possible, said the new law would give judges a range of options for sentencing murder convicts.
He told parliamentarians the Offences Against the Person Act with its mandatory imposition of the penalty of death, was being changed in keeping with Barbados’ obligations under the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has long ruled that the mandatory death penalty violates Articles 4(1) and 4(2) – which prohibit arbitrary treatment and limit the death penalty to the most serious crimes – of the American Convention on Human Rights.
These state:
1. Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.
2. In countries that have not abolished the death penalty, it may be imposed only for the most serious crimes and pursuant to a final judgment rendered by a competent court and in accordance with a law establishing such punishment, enacted prior to the commission of the crime. The application of such punishment shall not be extended to crimes to which it does not presently apply.
Brathwaite pointed out that the death penalty would stay on the books. (TY)
