A.G. says implementing death penalty requires unity

The debate over the death penalty: it re-surfaces almost every time we experience a wave of particularly violent crimes. It’s no surprise then that in the present climate of inexplicably senseless killing, serious efforts are once again being made to dust off the gallows and re-employ the hangman. News Five’s Janelle Chanona reports.

Francis Fonseca, Attorney General of Belize
?Where a person is convicted of the crime of murder in Belize, the penalty, the sanction for that crime is death by hanging.?

Janelle Chanona, Reporting
But the last time a prisoner was executed in Belize was over twenty years ago, in July 1985. According to current prison records, there are eight convicted murderers on death row.

Francis Fonseca
?In some respects, we are fooling ourselves if we think, as long as the Privy Council remains our final court of appeal in criminal matters, I think it will be very difficult, if not impossible to for us to carry out any executions.?

Attorney General Francis Fonseca, maintains that London lawyers use technical loopholes to either drag out capital cases longer than five years or have death sentences reduced to life behind bars.

Francis Fonseca
?The Privy Council is on record and established by precedent opposed philosophically to the death penalty. We have not been successful in getting a final conviction on any of these persons who have been found guilty here in Belize. They have appealed the cases, first to the Court of Appeal here in Belize and where our own Court of Appeal in Belize has supported the judgment of the lower court; they have appealed to the Privy Council. Invariably, the Privy Council has found a way to either commute those sentences to life imprisonment or to send back those cases for a new trial, so that remains a fundamental problem.?

In 2002, the government introduced a constitutional motion in the House of Representatives to abolish the Privy Council as the final court of appeal in criminal cases. The bill never became law however, as it did not get the cooperation of the Opposition, whose votes were needed to make the necessary three quarters majority.

Said Musa, Prime Minister of Belize
?We will reopen the debate on capital punishment. Those innocent victims of murder who have had their lives cut short cannot go to the Privy Council for a second life. Their families cry out for retribution. The people demand justice. Justice dictates that the punishment must fit the crime.?

Following his statement on crime this week in the House of Representatives, Prime Minister Said Musa has joined the death penalty debate.

Francis Fonseca
?But this is not to say that the Caribbean Court of Justice, which would then be the final court of appeal for Belize in criminal matters, that that court would be a court that would be inclined to carry out capital punishment as well.?

But beyond legal loopholes, there is an economic factor in the argument for and against capital punishment. Belize?s small open economy is extremely vulnerable to the feelings of larger countries.

Francis Fonseca
?There is talk of boycotting your tourism industry. There?s talk about all sorts of bringing all sorts of sanctions against your country, particularly from the Europeans.?

Janelle Chanona
?I was just going to say, is that true, that the Europeans, the European Union specifically have told us that if we actively carry out this law that we will get sanctions for bananas and sugar imposed on us??

Francis Fonseca
?That I know of, no specific directive or statement to that effect to the government of Belize from the European Union. But I know that that is their position as a Union. They are opposed to capital punishment; they have said they will not interfere with other sovereign nations. But clearly, they will use every tool, as they have demonstrated in the past at their disposal to try to influence the policies of different countries against capital punishment.?

Even as government attempts to give more power to police investigators and prosecutors to avoid technical glitches at the Privy Council, Fonseca warns Belizeans to be informed of all the angles.

Francis Fonseca
?Once we all understand and we all say listen we are prepared to deal with the consequences, we are prepared to deal with the consequences of making that decision then let us go ahead. But I think it?s an issue that demands that we have a unified voice. That is the only way we would be able to really ward off all of these international challenges that will inevitably come along with that decision.?

Reporting for Channel Five, I am Janelle Chanona.

The last person to be executed in Belize was Kent Bowers. He was convicted for the 1984 murder of Robert Codd at the Sueno Beliceno restaurant in Belize City.