The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

A DAY after Chief Justice Sir Hartman Longley said it would take a “massacre” before the death penalty is carried out, Tall Pines MP Leslie Miller called that line of thinking “utterly ridiculous and stupid.”

In an interview with The Tribune, Mr Miller said that kind of reasoning sends the wrong message to criminals.

Speaking a few weeks after the country hit a new murder record – with 149 homicides in 2015 – Sir Hartman told judicial officers during the 2016 legal year opening ceremony held in the Supreme Court that “the death penalty is virtually dead”.

“I share the view expressed by the president of the Court of Appeal,” Sir Hartman added. “Lest we have the experience of Charlie Hebdo (referring to the 2015 attack in Paris), the chances of ever imposing the death penalty under the present system are nil.”

Reacting to this, Mr Miller said: “I don’t know what world he lives in, the one thing he said that makes sense is no murder cases should go before a jury. They should be heard before a three-man judgeship especially when you know the jury will be tainted you send three judges to hear it. Number one it will speed up the case and, two, the lawyers won’t waste time.

“I thought it was up to the state and those elected in Parliament to put laws in place, the judges execute the laws of this country. So I was shocked when he said you need a massacre, what is going on? I respect the man but something is wrong. It is sending the wrong message, it’s saying if it’s only one or two murders you are good, just don’t kill five or six. It’s sad that the courts are upholding the view that you have to have a massacre for us to consider you to be eligible for the death penalty in this country. The value of my life is dependent on how many people die with me. So my one life is no longer a valuable life. It’s the volume or the bigness that makes the tragedy. We must fight fire with fire. The police have to do what they have to do. Take these criminals off the streets. The country needs to be cleaned up. We have to wipe them out. It’s either them or us.”

The last person executed in the Bahamas was David Mitchell in January 2000.

He was convicted of stabbing two German tourists to death.

Mitchell’s execution was controversial because it was carried out while he had an appeal pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

International criticism of the move was followed by a moratorium on capital punishment, which lasted until the Privy Council’s 2006 decision in the case of Maxo Tido.

In 2011, after a ruling from the London-based Privy Council, the Ingraham administration amended the death penalty law to specify the “worst of the worst” murders that would warrant execution.

Under the amended law, a person who kills a police or defence force officer, member of the Departments of Customs or Immigration, judiciary or prison services would be eligible for a death sentence. A person would also be eligible for death once convicted of murdering someone during a rape, robbery, kidnapping or act of terrorism.