Senators divided on death penalty

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

There are mixed re­views com­ing from the Up­per House on the death penal­ty, fol­low­ing the rul­ing that a 31-year-old man be hanged for a dou­ble mur­der.

Last Mon­day, Jus­tice Nali­ni Singh ruled that Rishi Moti­lal be sen­tenced to death by hang­ing for the 2024 fa­tal chop­pings of his com­mon-law wife Tara Ram­sa­roop and their 14-month-old in­fant daugh­ter Sher­maya Moti­lal.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor David Nahkid and In­de­pen­dent Si­mon de la Bastide said they were against the death penal­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In­de­pen­dent de la Bastide said, “Per­son­al­ly, I am against the death penal­ty, al­though I un­der­stand, like every­body, emo­tion­al­ly some­times maybe you see the point of oth­ers who are in favour of it, but in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly speak­ing, I’m against the death penal­ty.

“There are well-re­hearsed ar­gu­ments in favour of for and against. I just don’t think it is the right thing to do. Al­so, there’s the dan­ger of putting to death some­body who is in­no­cent and I don’t think we should ever take that risk. But some­times you get heinous crimes and you can un­der­stand why peo­ple speak in favour of it.”

Nakhid, mean­while, said, “That’s a re­al­ly nu­anced ques­tion for me. I agree with the penal­ty in prin­ci­ple, but I’ve nev­er agreed with it in coun­tries where the ju­di­cial sys­tem has not been im­par­tial, es­pe­cial­ly to­wards peo­ple of colour, es­pe­cial­ly to­wards dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple.

“So, I don’t agree with the death penal­ty in coun­tries like the Unit­ed States and Trinidad falls, as far as I’m con­cerned, with­in that cat­e­go­ry. We tend to be bi­ased against peo­ple of colour and peo­ple who come from dis­ad­van­taged so­ci­eties.”

On the oth­er hand, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Can­dice Jones-Si­mons sees the death penal­ty as an as­set.

Jones-Si­mons said, “The death penal­ty is on our law books. I think that it has been an ap­pro­pri­ate con­se­quence for crime and I think it can act as a de­ter­rent.”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Mar­lene Attzs said she be­lieves the call for the death penal­ty may have to do with the spate of crime.

“I think it’s go­ing to be an in­ter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion. I sup­pose one of the things that would have prompt­ed that is the state of crime and the kinds of crimes that we’re see­ing and the fact that the pop­u­la­tion and the Gov­ern­ment is at its wits’ end in terms of try­ing to un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing and how do we have de­ter­rence, be­cause you have the is­sue of in­creas­ing rates of crime and you have low­er de­tec­tion rates,” Attzs said.

“It’s dif­fi­cult to solve. So, I think it’s re­al­ly one of the things that per­haps the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to con­tem­plate, but it will re­quire a lot of dis­cus­sion mov­ing for­ward be­cause you know, that’s not some­thing we will wel­come eas­i­ly and it is go­ing to pro­voke a lot of con­ver­sa­tions, I imag­ine, from dif­fer­ent quar­ters so we wait and see.”

Last year, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­port­ed that there were 38 in­mates on death row, with 18 el­i­gi­ble to be hanged as of May 2025.