FOUR of 45 convicted murderers on death row will die, the Jamaican courts have reaffirmed under the resentencing review of mandatory death penalty cases, only half of which have been disposed of to date.

But many more have had their death sentences overturned, and their punishment downgraded to life sentences, under the review sparked by last July’s Privy Council ruling in the case of Lambert Watson versus the Queen, which held that the death penalty was not mandatory, and that judges are to be given more discretion in handing down sentences.

At least one convict of the 22 cases already re-assessed comes up for a parole hearing in 15 years.

The four men still slated for execution are:

. Delroy Stewart, who scalped a 12-year-old girl after raping her;

. Mark Watson, for the murder of a 68-year-old security guard to cover up a robbery;

. Michael Asserope, a rapist and killer of a 10-year-old girl; and

. Ian Gordon, convicted for the 2000 double murder of his cousin and another man.

Since August 8, the appeals court has also re-sentenced 11 of the convicts to between 15 and 45 years to life, and reaffirmed seven cases that had been commuted from death to life imprisonment by the Governor General.

“I am personally very pleased with the enlightened approach of some of our judges in the sentencing hearing process,” Wayne Denny, Privy Council legal officer at the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights (IJCHR), commented to the Sunday Observer.

“This approach, I think, forms the basis for my new found optimism that a Caribbean Court of Justice may be able to stand on its own, in the very near future.”

The other 23 cases have been adjourned for various reasons, including some with appeals pending, inadequate psychiatric reports and social inquiry reports.

Watson, the man whose case brought the landmark ruling, was convicted in 1997 for the double murder of his common-law wife Eugenie Samuels and their daughter Georgina, in Hanover.

Watson had stabbed both multiple times, in retaliation against a child maintenance suit that had been brought against him.

His case is one of the 23 still pending. A psychiatric report is to be put before the court at his next scheduled appearance on September 30.

Watson’s conviction had carried an automatic death penalty, but last July’s majority ruling from a special nine-member Privy Council panel that included former Jamaican chief justice Edward Zacca, held that while the death penalty was constitutional it was not automatic, in cases of capital murder.

“It will, therefore, be open to the court in these cases (where the law authorises the death sentence) either to impose the death sentence or to impose a lesser punishment, depending on the view it takes of the crime which the defendant committed and all the

relevant circumstances,” the special panel held.

Denny said the Privy Council ruling did not prevent the future application of the death penalty, but instead gave the courts the discretion to impose a lesser punishment.

“We are pleased with the ruling and the judges have been forced to take an enlightened approach to the issue,” he said.

As for the remaining 23 cases, Denny said Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe’s wish was for all the cases to be disposed of before the Summer recess of the courts, but that the timetable would be breached.

The listing of cases show court hearings extending to December 27 this year. At least six of the cases are pending psychiatric reports, another three are awaiting Privy Council appeal rulings; and in four cases, the hearings were delayed because the lawyers were out of the country.

Interestingly, in the case of Kevin Mayne (said to be mentally ill) and Jeffrey Miller, they were ordered taken off death row as they had both been there for more than the five-year cut-off stipulated under the Pratt and Morgan ruling. Their case comes up again on September 23.

Following the Watson ruling, government moved quickly to address the situation, and brought

legislation to Parliament, which has been passed by both Houses, amending the Offences

Against the Person Act.

Prior to its amendment, Section 2(1) of the Act had provided for the mandatory death penalty in the case of murder of any member of the security forces, a correctional officer, a Justice of the Peace or a judicial officer acting in the course of their duties.

The mandatory death penalty had also been applied to other categories of murder, including the killing of a witness, or murders carried out in the furtherance of a robbery, house-breaking, arson of a dwelling house, or sexual abuse.

The amendment allows judges to decide on the death penalty based on the circumstances of the case before the court, and to hear character testimony before passing testimony.

But in turn the law now also imposes “upon the court a duty to specify a period of imprisonment which the offender should serve before becoming eligible for parole.”

Among the 45 cases were seven who already had their sentences commuted to life under the Pratt and Morgan ruling of 1993 – namely, Anthony Rose, Kenneth Clark, Junior Wright, Morris Boreland, Titus Henry, Donnovan Mulllings and Clifton Shaw.

Denny said the GG’s decision cannot be altered, adding that on that basis, their inclusion on the current review list was inexplicable.

“The commutations were made by way of an executive order of the Governor General and cannot be altered by the Court of Appeal,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Earl Pratt and Ivan Morgan were on death row for more than a decade and they took their cases to the Privy Council.

In what was also another landmark ruling in 1993, the Privy Council held that executions must be carried out within five years, or the punishment becomes cruel and inhumane.

virtuee@jamaicaobserver.com

Breakdown of 22 reviewed

death penalty cases:

4 re-sentenced to death:

Delroy Stewart

Mark Watson

Michael Asserope

Ian Gordon

11 re-sentenced to life imprisonment:

Kevin Simmonds 15 years to life

Hopeton Barclay 20 years to life

Rudolph Fuller 25 years to life

Trevor White, Nigel Calder, Alan Beecher 25 years to life

Brian Rankine and Carl McHargh 30 years to life

Kenneth Myrie 30 years to life

Roderick Fisher 40 years to life

Orville Murray 45 years to life

7 previously commuted by Governor General:

Anthony Rose

Kenneth Clark

Junior Wright

Morris Boreland

Titus Henry

Donovan Mullings

Clifton Shaw

Crimes of the four

Ian Gordon: In October 2003, Ian Gordon, then 33-years-old, and a sound system technician from Gordon Town, in St Andrew was sentenced to hang, after he was convicted of murder in the Home Circuit Court.

Gordon was found guilty of the August 2000 shooting murders of his cousin, Garfield Gordon, of Tavern Drive in Gordon Town; and Vincent Rafington, 42, also of Gordon Town.

Police picked up 25 spent shells at the scene.

Michael Assserope: The taxi-operator was sentenced to death in 1999, after he was convicted of the rape and murder of 10-year-old Tamara Osbourne, a grade four student of the Denbigh Primary School in Clarendon.

Asserope confessed to the police that he abducted, raped and cut the girl’s throat in June 1998. At the time, he was said to have had a relationship with the sister of the murdered child.

Delroy Stewart: A labourer of Rose Hall, St Catherine, Stewart was convicted on September 24, 2002 of the capital murder of 12-year-old Kimone Lewis on August 4, 2001.

Kimon disappeared while running an errand. A search by community members resulted in the gruesome find that night of her naked body in bushes near to the community centre in the district. She had been sexually assaulted and scalped.

Mark Watson: The security guard was convicted of the murder of 68-year-old Malvin Gayle, also a security guard, on October 29, 1999, while on guard duty at the First Life Insurance Company building in New Kingston.

Watson slashed the throat of the elderly guard and stabbed him 19 times. Watson was later found with Gayle’s watch, blood on his clothes, $5,640 in cash and a promissory note, which was taken from a vault in the buildng where the murder was committed.