AS BARBADOS CONTINUES its move away from the mandatory death penalty, another legal first was created yesterday in the No. 3 Supreme Court.
Fidel Nkomo Alleyne, a tradesman, now 41, of Denton Road, Grazettes, St Michael, and Malissa Carla Griffith, a 30-year-old salesman, of Rochester Way, also in Grazettes, will go down in history as being the first two accused who were allowed to plead guilty to the offence of murder.
It had been a legal tradition that accused, who faced charges of murder, were unable to plead guilty to that offence as it carried a mandatory death sentence.
However, in 2018, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruled that a section of the Offences Against The Person Act, which allowed for that mandatory death sentence, was unconstitutional, and that Section 11 of the Constitution, which gave the right to the protection of the law, was enforceable.
Alleyne and Griffith confessed to murdering Lamar Carter sometime between February 9 and 10, 2015.
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