Chief Justice explains commuting death sentences

Jun 07, 2012 News

Chief Justice Ian Chang has explained why he commuted the sentences of four Death Row inmates on Monday.
According to Justice Chang, all of the men had served what is considered to be a life sentence. He further told Kaieteur News that for the men, there is no death sentence anymore, and that their release is dependent on the Committee for the Prerogative of Mercy.
The Chief Justice stated that if other prisoners on Death Row would follow suit they now have to make the application. He said that the court is obligated by law to listen to their cases.
On Monday, four Death Row inmates had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment by Chief Justice Ian Chang. The prisoners were Noel Thomas, who, along with Abdool Saleem Yassin, was sentenced to death in 1992 for the murder of Yassin’s younger brother, Abdool Kaleem Yassin. The younger Yassin was shot dead in his Riverstown, Essequibo home on March 19, 1987.
The elder brother had hatched the murder plot to get his hands on his brother’s inheritance. Thomas was the hit-man. Abdool Saleem Yassin died in prison in 2002 from tuberculosis.
Thomas and his co-accused, after another warrant had been read for their execution, had successfully appealed to the UN Human Rights Committee, which recommended their immediate release from prison. This happened four days before their scheduled execution.
However, Guyana subsequently withdrew from the UN Optional Protocol on Civil and Political Rights, then re-subscribed with a reservation preventing convicted murderers from appealing to the body.
Justice Chang’s ruling followed appeals by Thomas’s lawyer, Nigel Hughes and Attorneys Jainarayan Singh and Ronald Burch-Smith, which stated that the men’s extended incarceration on Death Row amounted to inhuman treatment.
The other three Death Row inmates who had their sentences commuted are Lawrence Chan, who was sentenced to death in 1995, Vivikenand Singh, Attorney Jainarayan Singh’s client, and Muntaz Ali, who was represented by Attorney-at-law Burch-Smith.
Both Chan and Singh had their death warrants read to them on February 3, 2000. Two other Death Row inmates, Oral Hendricks and Ganga Deolall also had their warrants read to them on the same day. None was ever executed but lived under the shadow of the gallows all those years.
Muntaz Ali, and Terrence Sahadeo were condemned to death for the 1985 murder of 18-year-old Roshana Kassim of Sheet Anchor, East Canje. They had been convicted with Shireen Khan.
They have been in prison for over 27 years. Shireen Khan died at the New Amsterdam Female Prison in December 2009. One other woman remains on Death Row.

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Chief Justice explains commuting death sentences

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