ST GEORGE'S, GRENADA: The OECS High Court is set to meet June 28 to decide on whether a ruling in March which states that sentences meted out against Bernard Coard and his gang was illegal. The government has appealed the ruling, and recently received a stay of execution. At a case management hearing this past week Appeal Court Judge Michael Gordon laid down guidelines for the appeal which will be heard between June 28 and July 1. Justice Gordon ordered that all written submissions and affidavits be filed with the court by June 25. Justice Kenneth Benjamin ruled on March 16 that the sentence of imprisonment on Coard and others for the remainder of their lives be quashed; that the prisoners be remanded in custody and be brought before a judge of the High Court within 42 days to be re-sentenced under conviction dated December 4, 1986; and they be paid monetary compensation, to be assessed by a judge in chambers and paid to the convicted men by the State. The prisoners should have been brought before a High Court judge on April 27 to be re-sentenced with the possibility that they would have all been released because they had served more than 15 years which is considered a life sentence in Grenada. But the government of Grenada appealed the ruling days before. On April 26, Justice Gordon, presiding in St Lucia, gave judgment and granted a stay of the High Court’s ruling. The stay of execution means that the status quo will remain until the hearing of the appeal. Bernard Coard, Callitus Bernard, Lester Redhead, Christopher Stroude, Hudson Austin, Liam James, Leon Cornwall, John Ventour, Dave Bartholomew, Ewart Layne, Colville Mc Barnett, Selwyn Strachan, and Cecil Prime, were found guilty on December 4, 1986 and sentenced to death for the October 19, 1983 execution-style murders of Prime Minister Bishop and 13 other persons at Fort Rupert, St George’s. In 1991, the then Governor General Sir Paul Scoon commuted the death sentences of the convicted men to life imprisonment for the rest of their natural lives. Trinidadian Attorney Keith Scotland filed a constitutional motion on behalf of the 13 convicted prisoners, all of whom were part of Bishop’s People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) which overthrew the then Government of Prime Minister Eric Gairy in 1979. Justice Benjamin ruled on March 16 that the decision of the then Governor General to commute the death sentences to life imprisonment was unconstitutional and in breach of the separation of powers. SOURCE: CARIUBPDATE.COM