Michelle Brathwaite, the National Human Rights Officer for Barbados and the OECS at the UN, addressing participants at a session on the death penalty at the UN House recently.
Call made for death penalty research
There is a need for research relating to the death penalty and how the general public views this type of punishment in Barbados.
This was the consensus after a session that was organised by Michelle Brathwaite, National Human Rights Officer for Barbados and the OECS at the United Nations, and conducted by Dr. Florence Seemungal; Dr. Lizzie Seal, Senior Lecturer of Criminology at the University of Sussex; and Dr. Lynsey Black, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University College Dublin.
During the seminar, which was held recently at UN House, the findings of three studies that were carried out in Trinidad on homicides in that nation; how the administrators of justice go about administrating their duties; and getting public opinion on the matter were revealed.
“The outcome was driven by the profile of the participants. So we had maybe around 26 persons and I would say that maybe around 80 per cent of the persons are legally trained. So they came with an understanding already of how the death penalty is imposed or not imposed, given the current legislation and case outcomes of the courts, and they came to find out exactly how we conducted the study of the methodology, how it may be applicable to Barbados. In Trinidad we used case characteristics which were typical for Trinidad homicides.
“So they looked at all of these nuances and they thought that in general it was important to do the research and that it was even more important to do it in a Barbadian context...” (PJT)