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ONE senior criminal defence attorney disagrees with the Law Association’s call for foreign investigators to probe the deaths of the two suspects in Andrea Bharatt's kidnap and murder.
Senior Counsel Israel Khan said the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) has already started an independent investigation into the deaths of Andrew Morris and Joel Balcon, who died in police custody.
He said he was “in total disagreement with my association's call for foreign police to investigate the deaths..."
“The Police Complaint Authority has already commenced an independent investigation into the suspects’ deaths and the investigators attached to the PCA are not police officers, so there are no conflicts of interests.”
He also agreed with National Security Minister Stuart Young that the PCA had the necessary powers for an in-depth investigation.
“It must be noted that the PCA is not ‘bonded’ to the reports by other law enforcement agencies like the Homicide Bureau, Police Professional Standards Bureau,” Khan said.
In responding to calls for hanging to be resumed, Khan agreed the death penalty should be retained for “deliberate, wicked, evil and atrocious murders,” while appropriate punishment from reprimand and discharge up to life imprisonment should be imposed on others.
Sharing the views he expressed to the Prescott commission of inquiry into the death penalty some 28 years ago, Khan again recommended that the jury should be given the choice to recommend the death penalty.
He said it was for society to decide what sort of murders it was willing to tolerate and excuse for the death penalty, as he referred to classifications for different categories of murder.
“A convicted accused by a jury for a deliberate, wicked, atrocious and evil murder and the sentence of death will continue to have the right to appeal his conviction and sentence of death to the Court of Appeal right up to the Privy Council.
“Also, the Mercy Committee will continue to decide whether the sentence of death should be commuted to life imprisonment upon a wicked and evil murderer.
What more can a convicted murderer ask for? What more can the abolitionists plead for?” Khan said.
He agreed with abolitionists that the criminal justice system could make mistakes and it was possible for an innocent man to be convicted, and possibly executed.
But he said under the criminal justice system in TT, the likelihood was one hundred times greater that a guilty person could be acquitted than an innocent person convicted for murder.
Khan said it was a fallacy to say the death penalty has failed to stop the increase in murders since, “No one knows – the probabilities are that the increase in murders would have been higher if the death penalty was totally abolished.
“What we do know is that the abolition of the death penalty has not decreased the murders in those countries which have opted for abolition.”
He said in TT, hanging should be replaced by a more humane and less cruel form of execution, for example lethal injection, and the death penalty for treason should be abolished.
“It is quite true to say that the death penalty is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the State. A civilised society cannot afford to be emotional and to build castles in the sky.
“At this point in time of our history we cannot afford to use scarce resources in an attempt to cure or reform a cold-blooded murderer. It is true that the ideal state, the utopia we should all strive for, is a civilised society in which we could afford the luxury of not executing an accused found guilty of a deliberate, wicked, evil and atrocious murder,” he added.
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