SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON EXECUTIONS APPEALS TO TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO NOT TO EXECUTE WOMAN CONVICTED OF KILLING MAN WHO ABUSED HER

HR/98/70
30 September 1998





The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Asma Jahangir, is appealing to Trinidad and Tobago not to execute Indravani Pamela Ramjattan, a woman sentenced to death in May 1995 for the 1991 killing of her abusive common-law husband, Alexander Jordan.

In an urgent appeal sent to the Government of the Caribbean country yesterday, the Special Rapporteur expresses concern at the fact that abuse and extreme violence suffered by Indravani Pamela Ramjattan --including beatings, threats to shoot her and repeated rapes --were not considered by the investigating authorities or the courts to constitute mitigating circumstances.

The Special Rapporteur also expresses concern that this evidence was not raised by the counsel that the country's legal-aid board provided to the accused. The lawyer reportedly did not obtain psychiatric evidence relating to domestic violence, nor did he appear to consider this experience as relevant to her defence. In addition, the Special Rapporteur learned that for the first seven years of her incarceration the accused was not allowed to see her children, with the exception of her oldest daughter, who was allegedly made to testify against her mother at trial.

The Special Rapporteur considers that domestic violence of the nature seen in this case must now necessarily be accepted by all jurisprudence as legitimate mitigating circumstances in any crime committed under such pressures. The death penalty is too harsh a punishment for a crime committed in such situations.

Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur is concerned by the fact that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago has taken certain steps to accelerate executions, both by speeding up the domestic legal process in capital cases and by limiting the scope for their receiving international legal scrutiny. Such steps include the issuing of a set of guidelines which enforce strict time limits on applications for redress under international law, and attempts to remove the jurisdiction of international human rights bodies to hear complaints in death-penalty cases.

Ms. Jahangir calls on the Government to refrain from carrying out the execution of Indravani Pamela Ramjattan and to respect the de facto moratorium on the execution of women which exists in Trinidad and Tobago.

Ms. Jahangir of Pakistan, a lawyer with extensive experience in human rights, was appointed Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions by the Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights last August. The Commission, in its resolution 1998/68, particularly requests the Special Rapporteur to apply a gender perspective to her work.