Court to resentence 23 convicted killers

TWENTY-THREE convicted killers are to be resentenced by a High Court judge sitting in the Criminal Assizes.

Already, several have been listed for resentencing, with one being heard on Wednesday.

The listing of the 23 for resentencing comes after a committee – comprising Justices Ricky Rahim, sitting in the civil division, and Geoffrey Henderson, in the criminal division – sought to determine which former death-row prisoners who had their sentences commuted to life were entitled to be resentenced.

This is in keeping with a recent Privy Council ruling on commuted life sentences for murder convicts in the case of Naresh Boodram.

Last Wednesday, in an all-day hearing, Rahim issued orders for the 23, declaring that the imposition of life imprisonment was unconstitutional and unlawful.

Twenty of them were represented by chief public defender Hasine Shaik and deputy public defender Raphael Morgan. Three were represented by attorney Peter Carter, and the court will contact those who said they had privately-retained counsel on the way forward.

In the Naresh Boodram case, the Privy Council was asked to determine whether a court can substitute a sentence other than life when the death sentence is commuted.

In 2007, Boodram filed to have his death sentence quashed and to be resentenced by the High Court. His sentence was commuted to life on the basis that the court did not have the discretion to resentence him.

Boodram appealed and the Court of Appeal held that the High Court was not constrained to impose a sentence of life imprisonment and can resentence with clearly defined prison terms. It sent the case back to the High Court to consider an appropriate sentence.

The Court of Appeal’s ruling benefited scores of death-row inmates at the time. The court held sentencing judges had a full range of sentencing powers available to them and the discretion to impose prison terms other than life.

Those considered for resentencing last week were prisoners sentenced to death before the Privy Council’s ruling in 2004 in Charles Matthews on the mandatory death penalty, and who benefited from an earlier ruling of the London-based court on Balkissoon Roodal.

In Roodal, the Law Lords held that the death sentence was not mandatory. Matthews reaffirmed the death sentence. In 2008, in keeping with the ruling in Matthews, Justice Nolan Bereaux commuted the death sentences for six prisoners in an action which benefited other death row inmates, including those appearing before Rahim last week.

The six were Andrew Dottin, Kevin Dial, Takoor Ramcharan, Arnold Ramlogan, Beemal Ramnarace and Sheldon Roach.

In face, Dial and Ramnarace were two of the three for whom the judge did not issue orders, since they had other constitutional claims before the court. The third, Ramsingh Jairam, has an appeal pending before the Appeal Court.

Already, two more death-row prisoners have successfully received orders from the court that their death sentences cannot be lawfully carried out, in keeping with the principles set out in the Jamaican death-penalty case of Pratt and Morgan and the ruling in the Boodram case.

The Pratt and Morgan principle is that to carry out a death sentence after more than a five-year delay would be cruel and inhuman punishment.

Those to be resentenced:

Mervyn Parris, Mervyn Edmund, Kenrick London, Denny Baptiste, Parbatee Dass, Haniff Hillaire, Neil Hernandez, Peter Benjamin, Anthony Allan Garcia, Robert Taylor, Foster Serrette, Natasha De Leon (whose resentencing came up on Wednesday before Justice Hayden St Clair-Douglas), Samuel Winchester, Rodney Davis, Alfred Frederick, Steve Mungroo, Darren Roger Thomas, Gangadeen Tahaloo, Amir Bowlah, Phillip Chotolal, Wilson Prince, Bruce Herrera and Amir Mohammed.