Make death penalty attainable, says Champagnie

   

Defence attorney, King's Counsel Peter Champagnie is calling for lawmakers to amend legislation to make the death penalty attainable in instances such as Sunday night's deadly attack in Clarendon.

 

Seventeen people were shot, eight of whom died in the attack. 

 

Mr. Champagnie, while stressing that he supports due process in law and fair trials, said those who are convicted in relation to the mass shooting must face the gallows.

 

Noting that the death penalty remains on Jamaica's law books, Mr. Champagnie explained the difficulty in it being applied. 

 

"The common law principles that apply reserve the death penalty for what is called the 'worst of the worst' case and sometimes, and invariably actually, that threshold is very hard to reach. I therefore am recommending that there is legislation to have an automatic situation where once a person is properly tried, has gone through a fair process in terms of an appeal with a stipulated time period, and there is an adverse situation, nevertheless coming from a guilty verdict, that the death penalty be automatic." 

 

This, he said, should apply in cases where there is the killing of a child, multiple people, or the killing of senior citizens. 

 

Mr. Champagnie insisted that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.  

 

"Gone are the days where it was unheard of for a child to be killed for someone in their 90s to be killed or there to be a mass killing, those days were never a feature of Jamaica's history and culture as far as I understand it. And therefore, we need to have legislation to deal with our situation," he proposed.