Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Georgetown (Agenzia Fides) – On October 14, 2010, Guyana's Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty for people convicted of murder. Lawyers for about 40 death row inmates have appealed to the officials to have the sentence of their clients revoked, after the vote in the National Assembly. "We are asking for them, in the light of what has been voted, to consider these prisoners and change their sentences, to bring them out from death row," Clarissa Riehl, spokeswoman for the opposition in legal affairs, told journalists. The assembly of 65 parliamentarians has decreed the death penalty for persons convicted for the murder of law enforcement officers, prison guards, and members of the judicial power.
Riehl, who belongs to the opposition party, said that those who are waiting on death row for more than 10 years should have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. "Give them a deadline or see how many years have been sentenced to death and give them a certain number of years of condemnation, and then let them out of prison," said Riehl. Several Western nations have called on the former British colony to abolish the death penalty permanently. The mandatory death penalty for crimes of murder and treason had been inherited from the court system in Britain upon Guyana's gain of independence in 1966. (CE) (Agenzia Fides 25/10/2010)
