(Trinidad Guardian) A mandatory penalty of 25 years in jail, meant to send a powerful message to would be drug traffickers, was yesterday deemed unlawful by the Appeal Court in long-awaited decision. The ruling now allows judges the discretion to pass more lenient sentences on offenders who can prove mitigating factors in their cases.
The judges’ newfound power is a consequence of a landmark ruling delivered by a special five-member panel of the Appeal Court, in the appeal of two men who were challenging the 25-year mandatory, minimum sentence for drug trafficking. The judgment stands to affect almost a dozen convicted traffickers, whose sentencing had been deferred pending the judgment, in the highly anticipated appeal, as well as those convicted of the offence in the future.
The judgment, which had been reserved by the Appeal Court since July 2012, was one of several long outstanding appeals which the Judiciary had promised to dispose of by July, this year. Chief Justice Ivor Archie, who headed the panel and read their five-page executive summary of the judgment, said: “An accused must be punished for the crime he commits. But not only must his guilt or innocence be fairly considered, his punishment must also be fairly applied to the facts and circumstances of his case.”
Archie described the mandatory sentence as “arbitrary and capricious” as he said it did not allow for judicial discretion in adapting a sentence to the exact nature of the crime. He also said it was oppressive because it was excessive and wholly disproportionate to the actual crime.
“Such considerations are fundamental to the proper exercise of justice in a democracy, whatever the system of law. They are founded in fairness and respect for the dignity of the human person which is one of the bases upon which our nationhood was proclaimed,” Archie said. While the appeal panel struck down the mandatory nature of the sentence, it said it did not want to disregard Parliament’s clear intention in passing the legislation—to provide strict penalties for the offence of drug trafficking. The other members of the panel are Paula Mae-Weekes, Alice Yorke Soo Hon, Peter Jamadar and Nolan Bereaux.
