By Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
THE COURT of Appeal has granted leave to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for him to ask the United Kingdom Privy Council to determine whether it is unconstitutional to detain juveniles at the Governor-General's pleasure.
The Privy Council is being asked to determine whether or not section 29 (1) of the Juveniles Act is saved in its entirety by the provisions of section 4 (1) of the Jamaica (Constitution) Order in Council and section 26 (8) of the Constitution of Jamaica. If the answer is no, whether there can be severance of those provisions.
The Court of Appeal, comprising the Hon. Ian Forte, Mr. Justice Donald Bingham and Mr. Justice Paul Harrison, granted the application yesterday.
On June 1, the Court of Appeal ruled that it was unconstitutional to detain juveniles at the Governor-General's pleasure. The ruling was made in the case of Kurt Mollison, a juvenile who was detained at the Governor-General's pleasure because he was under the age of 18 when he was convicted on April 25, 1995 of the capital murder of Leila Brown.
Mollison was employed to Mrs. Brown, widow of G. Arthur Brown, a former Governor of the Bank of Jamaica, when he killed her at her Stony Hill residence, St. Andrew, on March 16, 1994 and stole her motorcar. Mollison was 17 years old when he committed the offence and therefore could not be sentenced to hang.
Mollison appealed against his conviction but during the hearing, the Court of Appeal invited Mollison's lawyer Deborah Martin to make submissions on the constitutionality of the sentence imposed on Mollison.
After hearing legal arguments, the court by a majority decision ruled that section 29 (1) of the Juveniles Act was unconstitutional because it was not in conformity with the Constitution. The court ruled that it had the power to impose a custodial sentence. Mollison was sentenced to life imprisonment but the court recommended that he should serve 20 years before he is eligible for parole because of the gravity of the crime.
