Death row prisoners escape the gallows: Privy Council ruling has implications for hundreds of people who have spent many years languishing in Commonwealth jails awaiting execution

HUNDREDS of people who have languished for years in death cells in Commonwealth countries were saved from the gallows by a landmark judgment from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London yesterday.

But the impact of the ruling - that to execute someone after holding them in an agony of suspense for more than five years would amount to inhumane and degrading punishment - may go much further than the 16 Commonwealth countries to which the Privy Council is the ultimate court of appeal.

Lawyers in the United States, where executions are common after five years on death row, have been monitoring the hearing and are expected to launch a similar test case to persuade the US Supreme Court to adopt a similar stance.

It will now become difficult to execute people after lengthy detention in countries such as Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malawi, New Guinea and Singapore, which recognise Privy Council decisions.

Yesterday's case was brought by Earl Pratt, now 34, and Ivan Morgan, 37, who have spent more than 14 years on death row in Jamaica after being convicted of shooting a man - three times having the death warrant read to them and three times being moved to the condemned cell in sight and sound of the prison gallows.

Yesterday the seven Law Lords who make up the committee said: 'The statement of these bare facts is sufficient to bring home to the mind of any person of normal sensitivity and compassion the agony of mind that these men must have suffered as they have alternated between hope and despair in the 14 years they have been in prison facing the gallows.'

But Pratt and Morgan were not alone in their suffering. There are 105 people on death row in Jamaica alone, who have all been held for more than five years - 23 have been there for more than 10 years.

It was in recognition of the importance of the ruling to these and other prisoners around the globe (there are more than 100 on death row in Trinidad) that persuaded the Privy Council to sit with seven law lords - Griffiths, Lane, the former Lord Chief Justice, Ackner, Goff, Lowry, Slynn and Woolf, who recently criticised the Government's criminal justice policy - instead of the more usual five. The last time seven law lords sat was in 1949, when they held that the Labour Board of Australia could not nationalise the country's banks. Two law lords died during the hearing.

Lawyers for the men argued that the long delay breached the written Jamaican Constitution which says: 'No person shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading punishment or other treatment.' In other words, that to hold men in primitive conditions for many years and then to execute them amounts to a double punishment.

The law lords agreed: ''There is an instinctive revulsion against the prospect of hanging a man after he has been held under sentence of death for many years. What gives rise to this instinctive revulsion? The answer can only be our humanity. We regard it as an inhuman act to keep a man facing the agony of execution over a long extended period of time.

'A state that wishes to retain capital punishment must accept the responsibility of ensuring that execution follows as swiftly as practicable after sentence, allowing a reasonable time for appeal and consideration of reprieve.

'To execute these men now after holding them in custody in an agony of suspense for so many years would be inhuman punishment.'

They ruled that for those held more than five years the death sentence should be commuted to life and for those held more than two years, there may be an arguable case over inhumane treatment.

Their ruling overturned a previous Privy Council judgment in 1982 when five law lords dismissed an appeal against the death sentence on similar constitutional grounds.

The Privy Council, founded at the time of the Norman Conquest, was the most powerful court in the world at the height of the British Empire. Its judical committee, which also acts as court of appeal for the General Medical Council and the Church Commissioners, has been criticised as an impotent relic, with moves by some Commonwealth countries to break links.

But Geoffrey Robertson QC, who with the other lawyers in the case represented the men free of charge and who first raised the issue of delay in death penalty cases in the 1975 case of Michael X, a black power activist, said: 'The ruling demonstrates that the Privy Council is not a colonial anachronism. It is increasingly adopting a role as an independent human rights court for the Commonwealth.'

Leading article, page 17

Law report, page 29