A Penalty Without Legitimacy: The Mandatory Death Penalty in Trinidad and Tobago (2009)

Papers prepared for a Conference held in Port of Spain on 7 March 2009

We commissioned an opinion survey among key stakeholders on the problems associated with the administration of the death penalty in Trinidad & Tobago. The research was conducted by the eminent experts Professor Emeritus Roger Hood CBE QC and Dr Florence Seemungal, following on from their 2006 publication A Rare and Arbitrary Fate, on the mandatory death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago.

In collaboration with the University of the West Indies, a conference was held in Trinidad in March 2009, for key stakeholders in government, parliament, the executive, the judiciary, the legal services and other interested parties.

Papers were represented at the conference by Professor Roger Hood, Douglas Mendes SC and Professor Jeffrey Fagan from Columbia University, New York.  The broad purpose of the conference and related research was to explore the case for legislation to be introduced to abolish the mandatory death penalty, based on the research findings of Professor Roger Hood and Dr Florence Seemungal in their 2006 Report on Homicide in Trinidad & Tobago.

The papers delivered at the conference, and available in this report, include: –

• Roger Hood and Florence Seemungal: Experiences and Perceptions of The Mandatory Death Sentence For Murder In Trinidad And Tobago: Judges, Prosecutors And Counsel
• Douglas Mendes: The Mandatory Death Penalty — An International and Comparative Perspective
• Jeffrey Fagan: Deterrence and the Death Penalty