By Wallace J.A Inside Grenada correspondent Saturday November 11,2006
THE MUCH talked about Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), which was formed to replace the Privy Council in England as the region’s final court of appeal, has made its first major ruling.
The CCJ ruling upheld the decision of the Appeal Court of Barbados in commuting the death sentences of two convicted criminals – Jeffery Joseph and Lennox Boyce – to life imprisonment. In 2001, both men were found guilty of murder and were handed the death sentence by the Barbados High Court.
The two men subsequently filed for a review of their sentences to the Inter-American Human Rights Court but the Barbados Mercy Committee denied them clemency as a result of which, the death sentence was read out to them.
The Court of Appeal then stepped in and commuted the death sentences to life imprisonment because the Mercy Committee had denied them the right to go before the human rights tribunal. The Government of Barbados subsequently decided to contest the ruling of the appeal court before the recently formed CCJ.
The judges of the CCJ ruled that the rights of the convicted men to the protection of the law was contravened when the Barbados Mercy Committee refused to allow the convicts to be heard by the human rights body before they were read their death warrants. They stated that the men had the right to be heard by an international human rights tribunal.
Many persons in the region were skeptical about the formation of the CCJ, preferring to maintain the Privy Council as the regions final appellant court. Some of the people who share this view claim that they do not think that the Caribbean is ‘mature’ enough to sever the final link to our colonial past. There is a feeling harbored by some in the region that the CCJ could become a ‘hanging court.’ This first big ruling by the regional court will go quite a long way in allaying the fears of people in the region.
