Bro George Constantine’s Situation.

The proposed Judiciary meeting in January has been deferred, but this is not as serious as some have anticipated. Bro George first came into contact with the Truth through a CAT advertisement in a Trinidad newspaper, he was instructed via the Bible Basics Course and has been an excellent student of the Word ever since. After his baptism a number of efforts to get a reprieve of the death sentence were made without success. The London lawyers acting on his behalf were not only in contact with the Trinidad Judiciary, but also the London Privy Council, with whom we also had some contact. We made a case to demonstrate George’s genuine repentance which greatly impressed the lawyer with George and the way the Christadelphians were dealing with the case.

Photo: Bro George Constantine

The situation changed and various organisations were trying to get the death sentence for all prisoners to be repealed together. There were differences between Trinidad and London and it seemed at one time Trinidad was going to carry out the death sentences. However, a decision was made by the authorities to commute all 52 sentenced to death before July 7th 2004 to life imprisonment. Legally the cases of all 52 are now being reviewed by the authorities and so personal legal representation of individuals was considered of little use at the present time until the principles had been established, especially as they were now all off death row. The problem now seems to be how they are going to apply the decision of commuting Brother George to life imprisonment. Life imprisonment seems to be a minimum of 15 years. George was sentenced to death on February 17th 1995 and so, technically, he could be released February 17th 2010. He was imprisoned four years earlier pending trial. The legal wrangle is how to apply this commuting of the death sentence to life imprisonment. So let us pray that, should the Master tarry, George will be released in less than a year. The problem then will be how to rehabilitate George and we all need to pray for the Lord’s guidance and blessing upon all those associated with that. The authorities do have what appears to be an excellent rehabilitation scheme and at the moment Bro George is busy on a tailoring course for six hours a day, Monday to Friday. Formerly he was an air traffic controller, and when the next session of training course starts in September, he would like to be considered for the Computer Course.

Marcus Heaster