Commissioner of Corrections Major Richard Reese yesterday said he was unable to confirm that convicted murderers Earl Pratt and Mary Lynch would be released on parole as was reported in the media yesterday.

“I haven’t received formal notification so I can’t say whether he will be released or not,” Reese told the Sunday Observer.

“I know he applied for parole. If it were accepted it would be granted with a number of conditions. For example, if he was on life sentence, parole would be indefinite, unless he was granted a reprieve,” Reese explained.

For his part, Attorney General Senator A J Nicholson said he had no comment on the matter.

The decision to grant parole, according to Reese, is made by the Parole Board, an independent body which stipulates the specific rules governing the conditional release.

“In circumstances like these,” he said, “the board makes its decisions and we comply.”

Pratt and another man, Ivan Morgan, were found guilty of fatally shooting Junior Anthony Missick in October 1977 and were both sentenced to death in 1979.

However, their sentences were overturned by the Privy Council in 1994 in a ruling that made it illegal for persons on death row for more than 5 years to be executed.

Their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Morgan, however, died while in custody at the St Catherine District Prison.

Lynch has been serving time in the Fort Augusta Prison for women after she was found guilty of murdering her husband, Leary Lynch, in May 1992. Forensic reports revealed that Leary Lynch was chopped 25 times in his head. The body was dismembered and limbs hidden in different spots.

The year 1988 was the last in contemporary times that a hanging was carried out in Jamaica.

According to Reese, the reason the state has not been executing persons placed on death row is “a matter that falls outside my jurisdiction. My duty is to carry out the instructions of the court or other relevant authority”.

“Between the end of last year and early 2006, we had about 45 cases of persons who had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment,” added Reese. “So there is an increase in the stock levels of lifers because we’re not executing.”

Reese noted that there were about 500 prisoners in this category at the island’s maximum security institutions – the St Catherine District Prison and the Tower Street Adult Correctional Facility in Kingston.

However, according to the former army officer, there has been a 99 per cent compliance rate among parolees who do not breach the conditions put in place.

“It shows that our board’s decisions are 99 per cent correct,” he said.