Trinidad and Tobago: Constitutionality of Mandatory Death Penalty
| Author | Graeme Broadbent |
| Published date | 01 June 2004 |
| Date | 01 June 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1350/jcla.68.3.211.34446 |
| Subject Matter | Privy Council |
Privy Council
Trinidad and Tobago: Constitutionality of Mandatory
Death Penalty
Roodal v The State [2003] UKPC 78
The appellant had been convicted of murder, having shot the victim, a
man who had apparently come to steal marijuana, which was being
illegally cultivated. A sentence of death was passed. This was regarded as
a mandatory penalty by the judge, in accordance with the prevailing
interpretation of s. 4 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1925, Ch.
11:08, of Trinidad and Tobago. This provides: ‘Every person convicted of
murder shall suffer death as a felon.’ The conviction and sentence were
upheld by the Court of Appeal of Trinidad and Tobago. The issues before
the Privy Council were whether s. 4 had been correctly interpreted and
whether there were any constitutional objections to it.
H
ELD
,
BY A MAJORITY OF
3
TO
2,
THAT S
. 4
HAD TO BE INTERPRETED AS
PROVIDING A DISCRETIONARY RATHER THAN MANDATORY DEATH SEN-
TENCE
.Section 4 had to be read together with subsequent legislation,
including here the Interpretation Act 1962 and the Constitution (both
the 1962 independence Constitution and the 1976 Constitution, which
had been adopted when Trinidad and Tobago became a republic, had to
be considered). It was not possible to approach each element separately
as the Court of Appeal had done. Adopting this approach, and recognis-
ing that such legislation was always speaking, s. 4 should be interpreted
as laying down a discretionary rather than a mandatory penalty. The
case would be remitted to the High Court for determination of the
appropriate sentence.
C
OMMENTARY
This is the latest in a line of cases striking down mandatory death
sentences in Caribbean states. More cases are pending, and it seems only
a matter of time before the Privy Council will have worked its way
round the Caribbean holding such sentences to be unconstitutional.
That such extensive case law is necessary is due to the fact that the law
of each country differs in detail, so that a decision in one jurisdiction is
not necessarily determinative of the position in another. Thus, the
earlier decisions of the Privy Council in Reyes v The Queen [2002] UKPC
11, (2003) 67 JCL 124 (Belize), Rv Hughes [2002] UKPC 12, [2002] 2 AC
259 (St Lucia) and Fox v The Queen [2002] UKPC 13, [2002] 2 AC 284 (St
Kitts and Nevis), which struck down mandatory death sentences, were
not able to determine this appeal and, indeed, were distinguished by the
Court of Appeal of Trinidad and Tobago in upholding the mandatory
death penalty in this case. In turn, the present case does not determine
the position in Jamaica and Barbados, from which appeals are pending
211
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