Ramadhar says he now supports death penalty for murder

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

The im­po­si­tion of the death penal­ty on 33-year-old Rishi Moti­lal for the killing of his es­tranged girl­friend and their child has reignit­ed dis­cus­sion on the le­gal process and views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

Ex­pe­ri­enced civ­il and crim­i­nal at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har yes­ter­day ex­plained that a death sen­tence does not mark the end of the road in the jus­tice sys­tem, as le­gal av­enues re­main open.

Ex­press­ing his view on the death penal­ty, Ra­mad­har said his­tor­i­cal­ly he had been an­ti-death penal­ty, but his view has changed, giv­en the state of so­ci­ety.

“I am now lean­ing in favour of the full ex­tent of the law be­ing ex­er­cised on those who do not have val­ue for hu­man life. At the same time, how­ev­er, ap­pre­ci­ate that there must be de­grees of mur­der and on­ly the most heinous of them, for in­stance paid ex­e­cu­tion, should at­tract the penal­ty of death.”

He said a death sen­tence trig­gers an au­to­mat­ic right to an ap­peal to the Court of Ap­peal, but a no­tice of ap­peal for both the con­vic­tion and sen­tence has to be done with­in 14 days.

“The Court of Ap­peal would over­look the en­tire pro­ceed­ings that would con­firm whether the con­vic­tion was ap­pro­pri­ate and if it was in fact so, they would con­firm the sen­tence. If there is any er­ror in the pro­ceed­ings, they may very well quash the sen­tence and con­vic­tion and send it back for a re­tri­al.”

Even if the sen­tence and con­vic­tion are up­held, he said an ap­peal can al­so be tak­en to the Privy Coun­cil as the fi­nal ar­biter of the le­gal pro­ceed­ings, but leave must first be sought from the Privy Coun­cil. He added that there are al­so op­tions to ap­proach hu­man rights bod­ies, in­clud­ing the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee. He re­mind­ed, how­ev­er, that all le­gal pro­ceed­ings and ap­peals must be con­clud­ed with­in a five-year pe­ri­od from the date of sen­tence and con­vic­tion un­der the Pratt and Mor­gan rule, oth­er­wise, the death penal­ty can­not be car­ried out.

Al­so con­tact­ed, con­sul­tant at the Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice, Leela Ramdeen, not­ed that about two-thirds of the coun­tries in the world have abol­ished the death penal­ty in law or prac­tice. She said the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, how­ev­er, is a po­lit­i­cal is­sue.

“The courts have gone as far as they could. The death penal­ty will not en­able us to make peace and non-vi­o­lence a re­al­i­ty. There have been a num­ber of re­ports that have made ex­cel­lent rec­om­men­da­tions that will help us to ad­dress the root caus­es of crime, rather than just look­ing at the symp­toms and “bay­ing for blood.” For ex­am­ple, the 2012 UNDP Re­port: Hu­man de­vel­op­ment and the shift to bet­ter cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty,” Ramdeen said.

Not­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ments last year that the death penal­ty could not be car­ried out be­cause of le­gal con­straints, Ramdeen ques­tioned whether it’s time for T&T to use hu­man in­ge­nu­ity to de­vise the most ad­e­quate, eq­ui­table and ef­fec­tive man­ner to deal with cul­ture of vi­o­lence that con­fronts T&T.

“For ex­am­ple, fos­ter­ing an eth­ic of re­spect for life, strength­en­ing fam­i­ly life, fix­ing our bro­ken in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.”

Adding that the death penal­ty has no place in to­day’s word, she said each per­son must com­mit to build­ing the right re­la­tion­ships and work to cre­ate a so­ci­ety that re­spects, af­firms, en­hances and pro­motes the dig­ni­ty, worth and the po­ten­tial of every hu­man per­son.

Last May, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke about le­gal con­straints af­fect­ing the death penal­ty, based on a le­gal re­port from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie. She stat­ed then that as of May 10, 2025, there were 38 in­mates on Death Row, 18 of whom fell with­in the five-year lim­it set by the Privy Coun­cil’s Pratt and Mor­gan rul­ing, while 20 are out­side the time­frame due to pend­ing ap­peals. How­ev­er, she said no ex­e­cu­tions could have been car­ried out at that time be­cause le­gal pro­ceed­ings were on­go­ing for all 18 el­i­gi­ble in­mates.

T&T record­ed its last ex­e­cu­tions in 1999, that of al­leged drug king­pin Dole Chadee and eight mem­bers of his gang, who were hanged for the 1994 mur­ders of the Ba­boolal fam­i­ly in June. In Ju­ly of the same year, An­tho­ny Brig­gs was ex­e­cut­ed for the mur­der of a taxi dri­ver.