In 1999, the last time this coun­try hanged a con­vict­ed killer the mur­der toll for the year was 93. That was the low­est this coun­try's mur­der toll has been for at least the last 23 years, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics.

At the cur­rent rate of mur­ders tak­ing place in this coun­try, we will reach that 1999 toll by Feb­ru­ary–just two months in­to the new year.

With on­ly 28 days of this year gone so far, the mur­der toll in this coun­try has al­ready sur­passed the 1999 halfway mark with more than 50 peo­ple be­ing killed in just 29 days.

"Af­ter we car­ried out the death penal­ty things in Trinidad and To­ba­go were calm every­where, very calm, be­cause it makes a dif­fer­ence to the psy­chol­o­gy of a crim­i­nal if the per­son knows that if he is caught he will be con­vict­ed and if he is con­vict­ed, he will face the death sen­tence. If the crim­i­nals and the po­ten­tial crim­i­nals know that they will get away, they would not be caught or if they are a caught they will still get away, you are not solv­ing crime, you can't solve it," Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj told the Sun­day Guardian.

Ma­haraj was the at­tor­ney gen­er­al when the last hang­ings in this coun­try took place. An­tho­ny Brig­gs was the last per­son to be hanged.

Brig­gs blud­geoned taxi dri­ver Siew­dath Ramkissoon to death dur­ing a rob­bery in Au­gust 1992. On June 21, 1996, Brig­gs was con­vict­ed of mur­der.

He was ex­e­cut­ed on Ju­ly 28, 1999.

Brig­gs was hanged just over a month af­ter the no­to­ri­ous Dole Chadee gang was hanged over a three-day pe­ri­od.

Dole Chadee, Joey Rami­ah and Ramkelawan Singh were ex­e­cut­ed on June 4, 1999.

While Clive Thomas, Robin Gopaul and Rus­sell Sanker­al­li were hanged on June 5, 1999.

On June 7, 1999 Joel Ram­s­ingh, Steve Ever­s­ley and Bag­wan­deen Singh were hanged.

The Chadee gang were hanged for their in­volve­ment in the mur­der of the Ba­boolal fam­i­ly in 1994.

Hamil­ton Ba­boolal, his moth­er Rook­min, his sis­ter, Mon­i­ca, and his fa­ther, Deo, were all shot dead dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

Ma­haraj said the then Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment led by Bas­deo Pan­day had to take de­ci­sive ac­tion to en­sure that the hang­ings could be done.

"First thing first, Trinidad and To­ba­go does not need any law to bring back the death penal­ty, the law is al­ready there, it is in the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act (Chap­ter 11:08 Sec­tion 4) which says that if you com­mit mur­der the penal­ty is death," Ma­haraj said.

How­ev­er, the chal­lenges that the then gov­ern­ment faced were from in­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Rights or­gan­i­sa­tions and al­so en­sur­ing that all the ex­e­cu­tions were done with­in the time-frame stat­ed in the Pratt and Mor­gan case.

In the Pratt and Mor­gan case the Privy Coun­cil ruled that pro­longed de­lay in car­ry­ing out a sen­tence of death af­ter that sen­tence had been passed could amount to in­hu­man pun­ish­ment. That is five years af­ter the con­vic­tion and sen­tenc­ing.

'The State's ap­pa­ra­tus for fight­ing crime has failed'

Ma­haraj said the UNC saw it as a "strug­gle to car­ry out the wish­es of the peo­ple".

"It was a great chal­lenge but it was done. If we did not do that the Dole Chadee gang could not have been ex­e­cut­ed. They would have been still there," Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj said dur­ing the 1995 gen­er­al elec­tion the is­sue of crime was a very im­por­tant part of the po­lit­i­cal agen­da.

In 1989 a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was chaired by Se­nior Coun­sel El­ton Prescott in­to the death penal­ty.

Ma­haraj said amend­ing any law with re­gard to the death penal­ty would be un­nec­es­sary.

"It makes no sense we go through the process of Par­lia­ment to try to pass a law be­cause it will make things worse be­cause you could then have the con­vict­ed per­son chal­leng­ing the law which will take a longer time," Ma­haraj said.

"So the ques­tion which a Gov­ern­ment has to de­cide in Trinidad and To­ba­go is that if it is felt that the death penal­ty would make a dent in the crime prob­lem they have to take steps to im­ple­ment it with­in the pe­ri­od fixed by the law and it can be done. It has been done and it can be done," he said.

Ma­haraj said the rea­son for the high crime in this coun­try is be­cause "the State's ap­pa­ra­tus for fight­ing crime has failed".

"I think one of the rea­sons for the high mur­der rate in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the high crime rate is that the State ap­pa­ra­tus for fight­ing crime has failed and it leads one to won­der whether there is any se­ri­ous mis­sion to deal with the crime prob­lem," he said.

'We need ac­tion, pas­sion, de­ter­mi­na­tion'

"In or­der to car­ry out the death penal­ty you first have to catch the mur­der­er, if you do not catch the mur­der­er you can­not hang phan­tom peo­ple, so in or­der to catch the mur­der­er you have to im­prove the de­tec­tion ma­chin­ery and you can­not im­prove the de­tec­tion ma­chin­ery to catch the crim­i­nals if you do not have a prop­er foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ry. And we do not have a prop­er foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ry in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we do not have the mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, and we do not use the mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy," he said.

Ma­haraj said the coun­try al­so does not have an ef­fec­tive Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme in the coun­try. He said a DNA bank al­so needs to be es­tab­lished.

"Here is it in Trinidad and To­ba­go we are deal­ing with a crime prob­lem in the 21st cen­tu­ry but we re­al­ly have 18th cen­tu­ry meth­ods to deal with it," Ma­haraj said.

If some­thing is not done the crime prob­lem will get worse, Ma­haraj warned.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go has to make a de­ci­sion and it is a se­ri­ous de­ci­sion. This crime prob­lem is go­ing to get more un­con­trol­lable un­less se­ri­ous and gen­uine steps are tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly to ar­rest the crime prob­lem. We have to stop us­ing the ex­cuse of we need leg­is­la­tion and law to fight this prob­lem, we do not need more laws, we need ac­tion, we need pas­sion, we need de­ter­mi­na­tion," he said.

Ma­haraj said ev­i­dence of noth­ing be­ing done in this coun­try is that he brought a law in 2000 putting mur­der in­to three cat­e­gories so that the death penal­ty would be re­strict­ed to cer­tain crimes.

"In 2000 I went to the Par­lia­ment, the Sen­ate passed a law, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed a law, it was on­ly to be pro­claimed in which mur­der would be cat­e­gorised in­to three cat­e­gories so you re­strict the death penal­ty. Up to to­day, it is not im­ple­ment­ed," he said.

The law brought by Ma­haraj is–Act No 90 of 2000 and is called An Act to amend the Of­fences Against The Per­son (Amend­ment) Act, 2000.

Ma­haraj said the is­sue of cat­e­gori­sa­tion of mur­der may be able to ap­pease pub­lic opin­ion by en­sur­ing that the death penal­ty will be re­strict­ed to the most se­ri­ous crimes.