HUMAN rights lobbyist Stand Up for Jamaica has dismissed calls made by former National Security Minister Robert Montague for the Government to resume hanging to beat back the consistent tide of murders in the country.

In his contribution to the debate on the Firearms (Prohibition, Restriction and Regulation) Act 2022, in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Montague urged National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang to consider making the relevant legislative arrangements to resume hanging, declaring that offenders should be hung by the neck, “until they are dead, dead dead”.

He urged fellow parliamentarians to either act, or remove hanging from the books, arguing that there was a “conspiracy of vested interest” not to resume hanging, as legislators are not bold enough to bring the amendment to the relevant laws to Parliament.

Responding in a release on Wednesday, executive director of Stand up for Jamaica Carla Gullotta expressed disappointment in Montague’s continued campaign for parliamentarians to gain the political will to revive hanging.

She said the statistical argument which Montague mounted — claiming that historical murder figures are proof that hanging will work in Jamaica by reducing the murder rate — has no merit.

“He argued that between 1962 and 1987, an average of 297 persons were killed per year when hanging was still on the books, compared to the average of 1,094 people per year between 1989-2014 since the last hanging took place. This argument is baseless as there is no clear link that the omission of hanging led to the spike in murders on the island. This will be a blatant infringement on the basic human right that the State should do more to protect and preserve at all costs,” Gullotta said.

At the same time, she agreed with Montague that parliamentarians should update the laws or get rid of them.

“The time has come for the Government to move ahead with the abolition of the death penalty. It is important that the Government of Jamaica complies with its obligations to protect human rights and we urge the Ministry of Constitutional and Legal Affairs to place on its legislative agenda the removal of the death penalty,” Gullotta said.

She added that if the crime problem is to be fixed, instead of reviving the inhumane practice of hanging, a much broader approach has to be taken, such as undertaking critical reforms that are needed in the justice and law enforcement systems.

The death penalty was last exercised in Jamaica in February 1988, with the hanging of Nathan Foster, a murder convict. The moratorium which Parliament placed on the death penalty was lifted in 2009, but hanging remains in law. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruling in 1993 in the case of Pratt and Morgan, that it was unconstitutional to execute a prisoner who had been on death row for more than five years, tied the State’s hands, forcing changes to the laws. Consequently, the sentences of many who were on death row at the time of the ruling was commuted to life imprisonment.