Pratt & Morgan v Jamaica Sentence (excerpts)

Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, St. Kitts and Trinidad and Tobago are the former British colonies that retain the death penalty and whose highest court of appeal is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. pp. 34F-35A Their Lordships are very conscious that the Jamaican Government faces great difficulties with a disturbing murder rate and limited financial resources at their disposal to administer the legal system. Nevertheless, if capital punishment is to be retained it must be carried out with all possible expedition. Capital appeals must be expedited and legal aid allocated to an appellant at an early stage. The aim should be to hear a capital appeal within 12 months of conviction....(If) there is to be an application to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council it must be made as soon as possible...In this way it should be possible to complete the entire domestic appeal process within approximately two years. Their Lordships do not purport to set down any rigid timetable but to indicate what appear to them to be realistic targets... p.35G, the Board also concluded that:- ...In any case in which execution is to take place more than five years after sentence there will be strong grounds for believing that the delay is such as to constitute "inhuman or degrading punishment or other treatment." It is to be observed that this period was not specified as a time limit. Its function was to enable the Jamaican authorities to deal expeditiously with the substantial number of prisoners who had spent many years on death row, without having to deal with all such prisoners individually following constitutional proceedings. It follows that the period of five years was not intended to provide a limit, or a yardstick, by reference to which individual cases should be considered in constitutional proceedings. With great respect to the Court of Appeal in the present case, they erred in so regarding it.