[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 24



BARBADOS:

Death penalty extension


It has evoked hardly any public comment, but the recent news that Antigua
& Barbuda is proposing the death penalty for crimes involving weapons even
if the victim is not killed should have set off alarm bells in the forum
of Commonwealth Caribbean jurisprudence. This proposal is of course a
reaction to the tragic slaying of a Welsh honeymooning couple on that
island. Fearful, no doubt, of the possible economic damage that could be
wrought to its mainstay tourism industry by such an occurrence, the
Antiguan Minister of Justice has advised of such in new sentencing
legislation for anyone who uses a gun or a knife in a crime that results
in death or serious injury. There will be a minimum sentence of 25 years
in prison and gun traffickers could also be sentenced to death under the
proposal.

It is not possible to comment in detail on the proposed legislation
without viewing at least a draft of it, but there may well be lay
wonderment as to whether a convicted person can constitutionally be
sentenced to death in our region for commission of a crime that does not
result in the death of another person. The United States Supreme Court
dealt with this issue a mere 2 months ago when it delivered judgment in
the case of Kennedy v Louisiana. A Louisiana court had found Kennedy
guilty of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Louisiana law provides for
the death penalty in such instances and this was imposed on Kennedy. On
appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court, the decision was affirmed, that
court holding that although the US Supreme Court had struck down capital
punishment for rape of adult woman, that ruling did not apply where the
victim was a child.

The issue for the Federal Supreme Court was whether the imposition of the
death penalty for the crime of child rape was in violation of the ban on
cruel and unusual punishment by the Eighth Amendment of the US
Constitution. A similar prohibition exists in our (and Antigua's)
Constitution against cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. In a narrow
decision (5-4) the court held that the Constitution did not permit states
to impose the death penalty for the rape of a child where the crime did
not result in death. Applying the death penalty in such cases would indeed
be "cruel and unusual" punishment.

The minority dissented on the grounds that there was no national consensus
prohibiting the death penalty in this case (even though only 5 states
permitted it), and that there should be no blanket rule barring the death
penalty in child rape cases, regardless of the age of the child, the
sadistic nature of the crime and the number of times the child had been
raped. The Antiguan proposal would also clearly and reasonably be
challenged on the ground that the sentencing of an offender to death for a
crime which does not result in the death of the victim is cruel, inhuman
and degrading punishment, one out of all proportion to the offence
committed. While one can understand the exasperation felt by the
authorities in that jurisdiction at the heinous and economically injurious
nature of the particular crime involving the murder of the honeymooning
couple, it can also be argued that there is no need to overcompensate for
this and to apply the death penalty to crimes which do not necessarily
merit its imposition in contravention of the fundamental rights of the
accused person. Such a move, in my opinion, especially given the
infrequency of the application of the death penalty in these parts, merely
trivialises the gravity of this form of punishment. In addition, it
seriously raises a question as to the comparative degree of enormity of
offences against the person. Is an offence committed with a weapon now to
be regarded as deserving of greater punishment than say, for example, the
rape of a minor, itself thought to be deserving of the death penalty in
about 28, none admittedly Western electoral democracies, of the world's
193 nations?

(source: Jeff Cumberbatch, Barbados Advocate)