Ainsley Walters, Gleaner Writer

Seaga

FORMER PRIME Minister Edward Seaga yesterday dramatically weighed in on the capital punishment debate, arguing that the perpetrators of grisly child murders must be hanged.

Speaking before the kick-off of the Digicel Premier League first-round final between Harbour View and Tivoli Gardens at the National Stadium, Seaga was blunt in his recommendation of the death penalty.

"I say hang them, hang them and hang them high!"

"I am not a supporter of hanging but the killing of children is extraordinary and that calls for extraordinary circumstances," declared Seaga, who is president of the Premier League Clubs Association and pro-chancellor of the University of Technology, Jamaica.

President of the Jamaica Football Federation, Captain Horace Burrell, who is no stranger to violence after his son, Taj, was killed in 1999, also backed Seaga's charge yesterday.

Parliamentarians are expected to participate in a 'conscience vote' tomorrow, which could determine whether the death penalty remains a feature of Jamaican law.

Debate in recent weeks in the Lower House has been fiery. Supporters of capital punishment argue that the wave of violent attacks should be met with the ultimate sentence - death. The pro-hanging parliamentary lobby, which is expected to prevail according to behind-the-scenes vote tallying, has also suggested that alternative punishments, such as long prison sentences, will not drive fear into future criminals.

No corroborative evidence

Those against the death penalty, however, claim that there is no corroborative evidence that it is a deterrent to criminality, saying it is an archaic method which runs counter to modern global trends.

Capital punishment has been an emotive issue for several decades, raising conflicting views in various quarters.

Opinion is also split between the so-called 'Old Church' and 'New Church'. Catholic bishops, who are doctrinally pro-life, issued a statement last Friday, urging parliamentarians to abandon hanging as a solution to Jamaica's crime woes. However, the leaders of some of Jamaica's growing Pentecostal and evangelical congregations have championed capital punishment as a just sentence.

The death penalty was last executed in Jamaica in 1988.

A 1990s ruling by the United Kingdom-based Judicial Commission of the Privy Council, Jamaica's final appellate court, used the Pratt & Morgan case as a template for future judgments. That ruling stated that convicts who had been on death row for more than five years should have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

Hanging in the balance

Jamaican lawmakers will on Tuesday decide whether the death penalty should remain on the books. What are your thoughts on the hanging debate? Email comments to letters@gleanerjm.com or editor@gleanerjm.com; or post to The Opinion Editor, The Gleaner Company, 7 North Street, Kingston.