THERE ARE 23 lawyers representing the murder convicts from the Caribbean countries who are asking the United Kingdom Privy Council to find that the mandatory death sentence for murder is unconstitutional.
The appeals are from Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, and the governments of the three countries are being represented by a total of 17 lawyers. The appeals were consolidated because the grounds of appeal are similar.
A nine-member panel is hearing the appeal which began on Monday and is expected to continue next week.
There are three appellants and the lawyers representing the two appellants from Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados have already made their submissions.
The lawyers for Lambert Watson, the appellant from Jamaica, began their submissions yesterday.
Government lawyers from Jamaica, Kent Pantry, Q.C., Director of Public Prosecutions, Michael Hylton Q.C., Solicitor-General, and attorney-at-law Patrick Foster from the Attorney-General's Department are expected to respond to the submissions next week.
Watson, a labourer of Anchovy, St. James, was convicted in the Hanover Circuit Court on June 15, 1999 of the September, 1997 murders of his nine-month-old baby girl, Georgiana, and her 24-year-old mother Eugenie Samuels, of Anchovy. The motive for the murders was that Samuels had sued Watson for child support. The bodies with multiple stab wounds were found in bushes in Knockalva, Hanover, on September 18, 1997.
Watson was convicted of the murders and sentenced to hang.
