Death
row prisoners in the Caribbean may have their cases reviewed after Trinidad's
mandatory death sentence for murder was ruled unconstitutional.
The
London Privy Council rulings on two death penalty appeals will allow the island
state's judges to reserve the sentence for the most serious murders.
Lawyers
say Trinidad's 86 death row inmates will have to be re-sentenced.
Hundreds
more in the Bahamas, Jamaica and Barbados have similar challenges before the
Privy Council.
Convicted
murderers Balkissoon Roodal and Haroon Khan appealed to the Privy Council, the
"appeal court of last resort" for many former British colonies, saying
Trinidad and Tobago's laws were contradictory.
One law
states murderers "shall suffer death" while another says capital
punishment should be the maximum penalty but not mandatory, according to British
defence lawyers working on an unpaid basis.
The
council ruled murder cases were too varied to carry a mandatory sentence.
It also
noted the possibility of executing someone who had been falsely convicted.
The
court also ruled Trinidad and Tobago had been party to the American Convention
on Human Rights, barring mandatory death sentences, at the time of at least one
of the murders.
Roodal
has been on death row since July 1999 when he was sentenced to hang for shooting
a man in an argument about the theft of marijuana plants.
His
appeal was dismissed by the Trinidad and Tobago appeal court in February 2000.
Lords
Steyn, Bingham and Walker, sitting in London, decided the mandatory death
sentence was inconsistent with the international obligations of Trinidad and
Tobago and unconstitutional.
Lords
Millett and Rodger dissented.
Lord
Steyn said according to the constitution the protection of "guaranteed
fundamental rights" was the responsibility of the judiciary and not the
parliament.
Only a
minority of convicted murderers in Trinidad and Tobago were prosecuted on the
basis of an intent to kill as the law required only an intent to cause really
serious bodily injury, he added.
Saul
Lehrfreund, a human rights lawyer at the London solicitors Simons Muirhead &
Burton, who represented Mr Roodal, said the ruling would mean "a completely
new set of procedures restricting the imposition of the death penalty in the
first instance".
"It
will also have significant implications in Jamaica, the Bahamas and Barbados,
where the constitutionality of the mandatory death penalty will have to be
decided, affecting at least 200 men and women on death row," he added.
In July
2002 the 15 members of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) applied for a $100m (�62m)
loan to set up a Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to replace the Privy Council.
A
Caricom spokeswoman told BBC News Online a building had been earmarked in the
Trinidadian capital Port of Spain
'Hanging
court'
But the
scheduled opening of the court this month has been delayed until next year.
Caribbean
leaders say the court will rid them of one of the last vestiges of colonialism.
A
spokesman for Jamaica's attorney general said the Privy Council was "out of
step" with public opinion in the Caribbean.
But
critics say the CCJ will be a "hanging court" with judges appointed by
governments keen to clear their death rows