[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 16


INDIA:

Q&A: 'Innocent Persons Are Sentenced to Death'----Interview with Bikram
Jeet Batra, Indian rights lawyer


There are only estimates of the number of people facing the death sentence
in India. The latest official figure is for Dec. 31, 2004 -- 563 people.

Amnesty International and Peoples Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), an
Indian rights watchdog, believe there could be between 3,000 and 4,000
today.

Their recent joint study -- a scrutiny of some 700 Supreme Court
judgements over the last 56 years -- concludes the death penalty in India
is a "lethal lottery". "The line between lack of information and secrecy
is rather thin," says its main author, Bikram Jeet Batra, a lawyer and
researcher, in an interview with IPS correspondent Ann Ninan.

IPS: Figures of the number of people sentenced to death or on death row
are fuzzy in India. Is this indicative of secrecy or a general lack of
information?

Bikram Jeet Batra (BJB): Secrecy in India is not of the same nature as,
say, in China where information on the death penalty is a state secret.
But it does appear that there is some effort to withhold information on
the death penalty. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) gives details
of the number of persons sentenced to death and executed since 1995 in
their annual "Prison Statistics", but claims to have no such information
before that.

Since 1953, the very same NCRB has been publishing the "Crime in India"
series with statistics on most offences. What this means is that while we
can easily know the number of persons charged for forgery and those
convicted for robbery in any of the years since 1953, we have no
information on how many people were executed.

The line between lack of information and secrecy is rather thin.

IPS: Do you think innocent people may have been sentenced to death?

BJB: Of the 700-odd cases we studied for the Amnesty-PUCL report (The
Death Penalty in India  A Lethal Lottery), in well over 100 cases people
were acquitted by the Supreme Court after at least one of the lower courts
had sentenced them to death. This leaves no doubt that innocent persons
are sentenced to death.

Perhaps the most well-known case of an innocent person being hanged is
Kehar Singh (in 1989) in the Indira Gandhi assassination case. Although it
is still not officially accepted as an error, even many judges have agreed
that the evidence in that case was shockingly insufficient and that an
innocent man was hanged.

IPS: Is torture endemic in India and how does the Supreme Court react to
allegations?

BJB: Torture is, in practice, an integral part of police interrogations.
Unfortunately the judicial system does not take claims of torture very
seriously. Even in cases where there is strong evidence of torture, the
courts have turned a blind eye to it.

Although confessions are not admissible in courts anymore, there is a huge
loophole: "discoveries" made by the police on the basis of "voluntary"
information given by the accused are admissible evidence. For example, the
police conveniently place weapons or other evidence at a certain location
and "discover" these on the basis of a fabricated statement allegedly made
by the accused. The courts are willing to accept the police testimony as
"disinterested" or neutral, despite many well-documented instances that
the police are not neutral -- particularly in cases where the bogey of
national security and terrorism are raised.

IPS: Are many people being sentenced to death sometimes without adequate
defence -- or even no legal defence?

BJB: Given how little legal-aid lawyers are paid, the bottom line is that
most good and successful lawyers are unlikely to take up many legal-aid
cases. That leaves usually the young and inexperienced or the unsuccessful
lawyers taking up these cases. There are of course honourable exceptions,
particularly in the Supreme Court. But most accused who are poor will
invariably get inadequate legal defence in the trial court.

It is at the trial stage where all the evidence is required to be
challenged. If this is not done properly, it is not easy for the evidence
to be overturned in an appeal before the high court and the Supreme Court.
While Afzal Gurus case (sentenced to death for the attack on Indian
parliament in 2001) is well-known, the Amnesty-PUCL report refers to many
cases of poor legal defence, including one where the accused were tricked
into signing away their own land by their lawyer in the high court. There
is no doubt that the conflict of interest may have played a vital role in
the rejection of their appeal. The three men in this case were
subsequently hanged.

IPS: Have children been sentenced to death?

BJB: In a number of cases there is strong reason to believe that juveniles
were sentenced to death as the courts wrongly came to the conclusion that
they were above 18 at the time of the offence. In fact, there is reason to
believe that one of the accused presently on death row in the state of
Uttar Pradesh was a juvenile at the time of the murder. His mercy petition
is presently pending before the president of India after the courts
rejected various petitions on his behalf, despite some of the judges
themselves expressing concern of his youth.

IPS: Is there hope of abolition of the death penalty?

BJB: I think it is important to recognise the global move away from the
death penalty. Despite what a small handful of nations say, there is no
doubt that the absence of the death penalty from the International
Criminal Court (set up in 2002 to prosecute the gravest cases of genocide
and crimes against humanity) is a clear indicator of world opinion.

Last year the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a
global moratorium against the death penalty. Indias vote against the
resolution is an unfortunate result of short-sighted thinking. The Indian
government (both the present and previous) has already shown that it is
not keen to execute too many persons -- we have had only one execution
since 1999. Supporting a call for a U.N.-led moratorium would be the
obvious step forward -- along with setting up an inter-disciplinary
commission to look into the question of abolition of the death penalty.

(source: IPS News)






TRINIDAD:

52 killers escape Death Row


52 convicted killers had their death sentences commuted to life
imprisonment yesterday, after Justice Nolan Bereaux ruled in favour of a
Constitutional motion brought by the prisoners, that they be removed from
death row.

Among them are female prisoners Chandroutie London, Natasha De Leon and
Parbattee Dass, all of whom were also listed to face the hangman's noose.

London and her husband Kenrick were sentenced to death on April 4, 2003,
for the killing of their five-month-old baby Vidya, who was thrown into a
latrine pit while she was still alive.

Commuting of the death sentences comes on the heels of recent calls by
several people who have called for the re-introduction of hangings to stem
the nations rampant murder rate.

The prisoners who were convicted for some of the most gruesome killings
will now spend their lives in prison.

Filed on June 13, 2005, the motion was brought by Death Row prisoners
Andrew Dottin, Mark Teeluck, Ramsingh Teeluck and Kelvin Dial on behalf of
all prisoners sentenced to death before July 7, 2004, when the London
Privy Council delivered its judgment in Matthews vs the State.

In Matthews, the Council re-instated the death penalty in Trinidad,
Barbados and Jamaica as the mandatory sentence on conviction for murder.

The Council had ruled just one year earlier in Balkissoon Roodal vs the
State, that the death penalty was no longer a mandatory sentence on a
conviction for murder.

Both judgments effectively meant that local prisoners sentenced to death
before July 7, 2004 would have their sentences commuted to life
imprisonment, while the others would remain on death row.

The prisoners claimed that their rights guaranteed by Sections 4 (a), (b)
and (d), and Section 5(2) (a), (e) and (h) of the Constitution had been,
or were likely to be contravened if they were kept on death row.

Sitting in the Port-of-Spain High Court yesterday, Bereaux delivered his
judgment also ordering that the 52 prisoners be removed from death row
"forthwith."

The Commissioner of Prisons and the Attorney General were represented by
Gilbert Peterson SC and Andre Des Vignes, while Ricky Harnanan appeared
for the Registrar of the Supreme Court, Evelyn Peterson. In a phone
interview minutes after the judgment, civil attorney Anand Ramlogan,
currently in the United States, said the ruling was another notch in the
States undecided stance about the death penalty.

"These judgments are a welcome wake-up call to the State because it must
make up its mind whether it intends to carry out the death penalty or not,
because it is cruel and inhumane to keep human beings in the agony of
perpetual suspense and limbo, with the death penalty hanging over their
heads," said Ramlogan.

"It demonstrates complete mis-management and mal-administration of the
whole death row system by the State," he added.

Israel Khan SC deemed it "a welcome ruling."

"It is long overdue because all these condemned persons came within the
ambit of the Pratt v Morgan principle, and since the law holds that it is
inhumane and illegal to execute someone where 5 years had elapsed from the
date of conviction, it follows that the death sentence should be commuted.
"I also sincerely hope that a great effort would be made to rehabilitate
these persons, and not leave them to rot in jail until they die."

Khan added: "I take this opportunity to call on the powers that be to
categorise murder into a 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree, and that the death
penalty should be retained only for 1st degree murders."

List of killers commuted for life

MALE DATE OF CONVICTION

1. Baptiste, Denny May 29, 1995

2. Benjamin, Peter October 27, 1997

3. Bissoon, Rashi November 29, 1999

4. Boodram, Naresh November 27, 2996

5. Boiselle, Marvin April 1, 2003

6. Brown, Ian February 2, 2002

7. Charles, Clarence April 19, 1993

8. Chotolal, Phillip December 17, 1996

9. Constantine, George February 17, 1995

10. Davis, Rodney January 31, 2001

11. Dial, Kevin January 21, 1997

12. Dottin, Andrew January 21, 1997

13. Edmund, Mervyn March 21, 1995

14. Edoo, Fareyad February 2, 1999

15. Frederick, Alfred September 29, 1997

16. Garcia, Anthony Allan October 30, 1996

17. Ghany, Rawle February 2, 1999

18. Herrera, Bruce June 23, 1999

19. Hernandez, Neil November 29, 1994

20. Hillaire, Haniff May 29, 1995

21. Isaac, Evit January 2, 2002

22. Jairam, Ramsingh November 2, 1995

23. John, Dennis May 26, 1992

24. London, Kenrick May 5, 2002/April 4, 2003

25. Mansingh, Francis May 24, 1996

26. Mark, Nigel November 11, 1997

27. Mohammed, Alladin November 2, 1998

28. Mohammed, Amir February 2, 1999

29. Mowlah, Amir October 27, 1997

30. Mungroo, Steve December 13, 1996

31. Mungroo, Vijay December 13, 1996

32. Parris, Mervyn February 17, 1995

33. Phillip, Allan November 17, 1995

34. Prince, Wilson November 25, 1996

35. Ramcharan, Tackoor May 28, 1999

36. Ramlogan, Arnold March 4, 1999

37. Ramnarace, Beemal December 16, 1998

38. Reid, Martin November 15, 1995

39. Roach, Sheldon April 25, 1998

40. Seepersad, Noel February 7, 1997

41. Serrette, Foster May 21, 2001

42. Sirju, Curtis October 29, 1999

43. Sooklal, Narine May 24, 1996

44. Tahaloo, Gangadeen November 19, 1997

45. Taylor, Robert February 17, 1995

46. Teeluck, Mark July 14, 2000

47. Thomas, Darren November 9, 1995

48. Thomas, Kieron July 27, 1994

49. Winchester, Samuel March 4, 1997

FEMALE DATE OF CONVICTION

50. Parbatee Dass February 2, 1999

51. Natasha De Leon November 9, 1995

52. Chandroutie London May 15, 2002/April 4, 2003

(source: Newsday)