What is it, if not the worst of the worst?
Vincentians turned to social media over the weekend of March 3-5 to advocate for the death sentence, as the island continues to record some of the most heinous killings, the most recent being that of Georgetown resident Sheldon Welch.
“The gallows should be cleaned up and brought back,” “a life for a life,” “it’s time to bring back Moses law,” and “Hang ‘Em High” were just a few of the sentiments expressed by residents after learning of the horrible murder of the Georgetown resident.
Welch’s murder brought back the eerie feeling of the horrendous January 8, 2003 murder committed by Daniel “Dick” Trimmingham, also known as “Compay”, on farmer Albert ‘Bertie Browne’. Browne’s head was severed from his body, disemboweled, and buried at separate locations on his farm. Trimmingham died in prison at the age of 60.
St. Vincent police announced in a press release on Saturday that they had begun an inquiry into the murder of Sheldon Welch, a 28-year-old laborer from Caratal, Georgetown,
Unlike the case of Albert Browne, Welch’s brother has been arrested on suspicion of murder. According to a police report, “Law enforcement officers in Georgetown received a complaint of the deceased’s disappearance. An inquiry was initiated, which led authorities to a mountain in Georgetown, where the corpse was located later that day in a pit’.
While the police did not provide many specifics, a trustworthy source told the St. Vincent Times that the police recovered crocus sacks containing Welch’s body parts, including his head, feet, hands, and disemboweled stomach. The St. Vincent Times also understands that a land dispute between the brothers may have led to the killing.
This is not the first time folks have demanded the death sentence or the gallows.
A loud cry was made on July 2, 2002, when Lokeisha Nanton, a 12-year-old girl pannist from Sion Hill, was killed. On February 26, 2010, Patrick Lovelace was convicted of Nanton’s murder and condemned to death.
Lovelace remains the lone death row inmate in St. Vincent prisons.
In December 2006, hundreds of Vincentians watched the body parts of a 21-year-old Vermont resident, Stacy Wilson, being chopped off and flung all over the Leeward Bus Terminal by a cutlass-wielding man named Shorn Samuel. Yet another loud cry.
On Wednesday, October 15, 2008, a unanimous finding of guilty was rendered against Samuel for Wilson’s murder. To everyone’s disgust, he is sitting in prison, feasting on tax payers’ money.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said in May 2022 that the practical abolition of the death penalty probably induced some people to use violence of the ultimate kind.
Gonsalves then alluded to the Privy Council’s recent judgment to confirm the validity of the death sentence in Trinidad and Tobago.
“There are certainly many people who feel strongly about it, and some might argue that in our situation, this is a matter that may be meritorious. The issue is one we will increasingly have to revisit.”
Murder and treason are capital crimes in the multi-island country, which carried out its last execution on February 13, 1995, when three people were put to death after having their death warrants issued only four days earlier.
St. Vincent is a British Independent Territory, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is still the last court of appeal for this territory.
There is still much discussion in St. Vincent as to whether the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) should replace the Privy Council as the final court of appeal in the region. The Caribbean Court of Justice was inaugurated in Trinidad on April 16, 2005. However, the country will have to hold a special referendum to be able to switch to the CCJ.
Caribbean countries view the CCJ as the means to throw off the last vestiges of colonialism, but human rights groups have warned that the Court may be a hanging court.
Since the Privy Council’s Pratt and Morgan decision in 1993, the death penalty cannot be carried out on a prisoner who has been sentenced to death for more than five years. In this case, the prisoner’s sentence is automatically changed to life in prison.
On March 11, 2002, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council confirmed the April 2001 decision of the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal (ECCA) ruling that the mandatory death penalty was unconstitutional and unanimously struck down the mandatory death penalty for murder in St. Vincent and six other countries.
The government delegation to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review in 2019 noted during the constructive dialogue that the country was “overwhelmingly supportive’ of the death penalty, therefore there were no plans to declare a moratorium on the death penalty.
