Outgoing Chief Justice Michael de La Bastide said that...

Outgoing Chief Justice Michael de La Bastide said that while the death sentence is a "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of basic human rights provisions, it could only be changed by parliament.
Delivering his last judgment on July 17 before officially retiring, De La Bastide said the validity of the death penalty was maintained by another section of the constitution and therefore cannot be "construed away" by the court.
De La Bastide and his two Court of Appeal judges were handing down a 26-page judgment in the appeal of Balkissoon Roodal, who had been sentenced to death by a lower court in 1999 for the murder of a man four years earlier.
Roodal's lawyers had asked the Appeal Court to find that the death sentence should not be mandatory. The lawyers had also argued that if a person is convicted of murder, the trial judge should hear mitigating arguments and then have the choice to impose the death sentence or another penalty.
But the state's lawyers urged the Court of Appeal not to interfere with the legislation relating to the death sentence, warning to do so would be to usurp the function of parliament.
In their judgment, the Court of Appeal ruled that: "We are firmly of the view that if the death penalty is no longer to be mandatory in Trinidad and Tobago this change must be effected by parliament." The Court added: "There are some advantages to doing it by legislation rather than by judicial decision. Parliament will be able to determine and prescribe whether the alternative punishment for murder should be imprisonment for life or for a term to be decided by the judge."
"It may also provide some guidance as to the factors which the judge is to take into account in determining whether or not to impose the death penalty.
"Parliament may also wish to address the question of what role, if any, the jury should play in determining the sentence to be imposed on a convicted murderer. This consideration, however, has not played any part in leading to the conclusion we have reached," the Appeal Court said in reaffirming the death sentence on Roodal.