Fifty criminals are to be pardoned for the country’s 50th Independence anniversary.
This announcement was made Thursday by Justice Minister Herbert Volney, who said in commemoration of the country’s 50th anniversary of independence, Government is to recommend to President George Maxwell Richards that he pardons 50 criminals, who would become free people.
He was speaking at the post-Cabinet news conference at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair.
“The Government is going to announce, in the fullness of time, the pardon of 50 persons to commemorate (the country’s 50th anniversary of independence),” he said.
Asked whether these persons had committed murder or other types of crimes, Volney said they were “worthy candidates, people who have spent all their lives in prison. It is on the recommendation of the Commissioner of Prisons, and it would be dealt with by the Mercy Committee, making the recommendation to the President”.
He however assured that “we won’t jeopardise public safety by releasing any dangerous person on the public”.
The last presidential pardon was issued in May 2012 to Godson Neptune, 83, a graduate of the University of Caracas in Venezuela, who had chopped his wife to death in 1985.
Neptune’s defence was that he thought his wife was a snake. He later stated he was in an “alcohol intolerance condition” which caused him to do the most outrageous and dangerous things.
