PARDON ME!

Jun 03, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The power of the Crown to grant pardons to convicts is a reserve power that has been retained in many of the constitutions of post-colonial countries. Guyana has retained such a power in all of its Constitutions.
But while post-colonial societies have retained this reserve power, colonizers, they have failed to ensure that the quality of their institutions is up to that which exists in their former mother countries.
In Pratt and Morgan, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council pointed out that tradition was that person sentences of execution were quickly carried out. There was never the kind of delays that exists today.
It is these delays that have opened the floodgates for death row inmates to challenge death warrants. It is these delays which ultimately led to the decision in Pratt and Morgan
While the Crown had the power to grant a pardon to persons on death row, the reserve power was based on the notion that it was unthinkable – the long delays that now exist between sentencing and execution.
In Pratt and Morgan, it was decided that once someone is held on death row for more than five years this can be considered as inhuman and degrading treatment and thus ultra vires of the Constitutions of most countries whose legal systems were inherited from the British.
It was no doubt on the basis or on the same legal reasoning as in Pratt and Morgan, that the High Court of Guyana commuted to life imprisonment the death sentence of a man who had been on death row for nineteen long years.
Before he demitted office, President Donald Ramotar granted a pardon to this individual. This has stirred a great deal of controversy because the person was convicted for the murder of a child. The former President was roundly condemned for what was described as pardoning a “child- killer.”
What many of the critics ignored was that this “child- killer” was himself barely out of childhood when he committed the offence. He was still a young man when he was charged with the offence. I believe he may have been only nineteen years old, thus still a teenager.
He could not have been considered a matured person. We also do not know if he was led astray and what remorse he may have felt in the interceding years. If instead of originally being sentenced to death he was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole, he may have been out today, because he would have served the number of years normally considered a life sentence.
These things have to be considered before condemning the pardon that was granted to the prisoner. I do not know the circumstances that influenced the pardon and I can understand the pain that the family of the murdered child feels.
But one must try also to get all the facts before rushing to condemnation. And these facts must consider the age at which the offence was committed, the remorse that the accused would have shown during his time in jail, and the long period that he had served. It must also be considered that his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Courts.
This is not the first time that persons incarcerated for murders were granted pardons. Indeed it used to be tradition on Independence Day for prisoners to be pardoned. In the past, persons who were sentenced to long periods of imprisonment and who had spent considerable time in jail were pardoned.
This year the practice of granting pardons was reintroduced for Independence. This was seen as a positive development, judging from the absence of criticism. In fact some sixty young persons who were said to have committed non-violent crimes and who were sentenced to short periods in jail were pardoned. This is in contrast to the normal practice in other jurisdictions of granting pardons to only those who have already served considerable time in jail.
More pardons for young non-violent offenders have been promised in the future. But is this the right way to go?
I agree with the argument that these young offenders need to be in school and at home rather than in jail. But is the solution to this problem, the granting of presidential pardons?
Would a better solution not simply be to amend the law to allow our judicial authorities to be able to give non-custodial sentences to young people guilty of petty crimes so that they do not end up in jail in the first place?
Leave the presidential pardons for those who would have spent long years behind bars and who may be truly remorseful over the crime they committed.

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PARDON ME!

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