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BELIZE: LAST MAN ON DEATH ROW HAS SENTENCE QUASHED
July 14, 2015: Glenford Baptist, 44, has a new lease on life after being told this morning that his sentence of death by hanging will be commuted.
He killed a man in 2000, and was sentenced to death a few months later along with two others.
He was Belize’s last man on death row – others before him such as Patrick Reyes, Earlin White, Adolph Harris, Patrick Robateau and Leslie Pipersburgh had had their sentences reduced.
The two grounds on which Baptist presented his case were that the length of time between his sentencing and the current appeal, some 13 years and 8 months, left him subject to violation of his constitutional rights under section 7 not to be treated inhumanely, and that his automatic sentence of death for conviction of murder by firearm was incorrect according to the local case of Patrick Reyes and the Queen decided by the Privy Council in 2002.
At the sentencing hearing planned for October, Banner says they will use the case of Adolph Harris, accused of killing a woman in the mid-1990’s, for a guideline for Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin to issue an appropriate sentence.
In 2000, Baptist along with the now-deceased Gilroy Wade and Oscar Catzim Mendez were accused of killing Azrin White in reported retaliation for an alleged kidnapping. Then-Supreme Court Justice and current Attorney General Wilfred Elrington handed down the death sentences in November of 2001. On appeal at the Court of Appeal, Mendez won but Wade and Baptist were dismissed. Wade was later killed in a jailhouse murder in November of 2007. Belize has not executed a man since Kent Bowers exactly 30 years ago last month. The death penalty statute, however, remains on the law books. (Sources: plustvbelize.com 14/7/2015)
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