Rick Halperin
Sun, 10 Dec 2006 16:43:43 -0600 (Central Standard Time)
Dec. 10 BAHAMAS: Prisoner who led death penalty appeal receives life sentence in Bahamas A death row prisoner at the center of a landmark ruling earlier this year that struck down the mandatory death sentence for murder in the Bahamas has been sentenced to life in prison. Senior Justice Anita Allen ruled Friday that Forrester Bowe Jr. should be imprisoned for life. Bowe was initially sentenced to death in 1998 for the 1992 shooting death of a 20-year-old man in Grand Bahama. Bowe and Trono Davis, also sentenced to death for murder, lodged an appeal with the London-based Privy Council, the final appellate court for many former British colonies. The council ruled in March that the island chain's mandatory death sentence for murder violated the Bahamas constitution and determined that sentencing should be at the discretion of the presiding judge. A call placed to Bowe's attorney went unanswered. 16 people have been executed in the Bahamas since 1973, when the nation became independent from Britain but kept the Privy Council as its final court of appeal. The last execution occurred on Jan. 16, 2000. (source: Associated Press) RUSSIA: Lawmakers Extend Death Penalty Moratorium as European Rights Body Urges Russia to Abolish It Parliament on Friday extended a 10-year moratorium on the death penalty to 2010, an extension of 3 years, by delaying the introduction of juries in court cases in the rebellious republic of Chechnya, Reuters reported. Some Western governments and domestic opponents of capital punishment have pressed President Vladimir Putin to scrap it for good. But he is also under pressure from conservatives at home who will probably use the issue in campaigning for parliamentary elections next year. The State Duma passed a bill under which juries will replace 3-judge panels in Chechnya in 2010, rather than in 2007 as had been planned. Russia, which still has capital punishment in its criminal code, has observed a moratorium on carrying out death sentences since 1996. 3 years later the Constitutional Court ruled that no court could sentence criminals to death until all courts had switched to jury trials. Chechnya is the last region with no juries because of "technical problems," officials said. "The introduction of the new law means that, for another three years, courts will not have the right to impose death sentences," a senior Communist Party deputy, Viktor Ilyukhin, said after the Duma vote. The bill has yet to be considered by the Federation Council and signed into law by Putin, but analysts said it would probably pass those stages easily. Russia committed itself to scrapping the death penalty in 1997, when it signed a protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. But it has never ratified the document, citing strong opposition at home. In comments for the Russian news agency Interfax the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammerberg again urged Moscow to abolish death penalty and said that the European rights body would continue to monitor the observance of the commitments assumed by Russia in the mid-1990s. (source: MosNews)