Time for a parole board!

A CRIMINAL LAWYER has suggested that Barbados take a “progressive step” in the delivery of justice and set up a parole board to consider whether deserving prisoners should be released early.

In the meantime, that attorney at law, Marlon Gordon, will be appealing to the Governor General – following a suggestion by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) – for a special panel to rule on cases in which convicts did not have time they spent on remand, prior to conviction, taken into consideration on sentencing.

He made the suggestion in an interview with the SUNDAY SUN after failing to persuade the CCJ last month to give his client Jerry “Jerry Dan” Weekes more time to apply for leave to appeal the 14-year sentence imposed on him for the June 24, 2001 manslaughter of Brian “Benji” Whittaker.

“There should be a parole board that could take some of the power that the Governor General is now being asked to exercise, in terms of clemency. I think it would be an improvement in terms of the whole justice delivery and reform and how we treat the people who are in the prison,” Gordon said.