LAW AS STATUTE enacted by the legislature is interpreted by the judiciary empowered by the legislature.
Laws are prescribed as remedies for mischief. The remedies include punishment and penalty. The punishment for some mischief is loss of liberty by incarceration.
The penalty in some cases is a fine. The penalty for murder on conviction is death. As a penalty, it is an effective deterrent for the offender who will never commit murder again. That satisfies the law essentially as a remedy.
The judicial execution of the death penalty is not an unlawful killing and cannot be equated with murder in any form of reasonable definition.
To say that a Privy Council’s or any other final court of appeal’s interpretation of pleadings before it prevents the execution of convicted murderers in Barbados is to place the judiciary at any level, above the legislature by which it was created.
None of the constitutional guarantees of fundamental freedom or international conventions are enforceable except as specific corresponding statute enacted by the legislature representative of a purported democracy of Barbados in the exercise of its powers of sovereignty.
Contrary to some opinions expressed, all that is necessary to resume execution as a penalty for murder in the jurisdiction of Barbados as a sovereign state, is for the legislature to prescribe unequivocally according to the will of a majority of the people, that the execution of the sentence of death for the crime of murder shall be carried out in the manner prescribed for the humane termination of the convict’s life. If hanging is deemed to be inhumane, then alternatives should be prescribed to effect the execution.To quibble about the Privy Council’s interpretation of the clear intent of statute law is a form of sophistry that morality cannot condone.
The interpretation by the judiciary at its highest level does not exceed the powers of the legislature to make laws for the remedy of mischief in the exercise of its powers to provide for the peace, order and good government of a sovereign Barbados. The laws of Barbados should be “agreeable to the people of Barbados (living here) first”.
– LEONARD ST HILL
