By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Cabinet Minister Leslie Miller said legislators lack “the guts” to ensure murderers experience capital punishment, which he considers a deterrent to violent crime.

He was discussing the country’s soaring murder rate, which has involved eight killings this year.

“It is disgraceful what is happening right now,” he told reporters. “Eight Bahamians dead in eight days.”

“That should not happen. We need to show more love to each other. Why do we have to kill each other? Why is that? You have an argument, someone is dead. We just need to show more compassion, more love and concern for each other’s welfare than we have been doing in this country and hopefully this year, it’ll be a better year but it ain’t turning out to be that way for the first eight days.”

 Mr Miller said he was especially saddened to hear about the murder of 16-year- old Davinique Gray, who was charging her phone at home when she was fatally shot.

 “We got to bring back capital punishment,” he said. “Is it going to happen? I don’t see it in my lifetime because they don’t have the guts to do it.”

 Although the law allows for capital punishment, the death penalty has not been enforced since January 2000, when David Mitchell was executed for stabbing two German tourists to death.

 In 2006, the London-based Privy Council ruled that the country’s mandatory death sentence for convicted murderers was unconstitutional. Some legislators believe the Privy Council would never uphold the death penalty.

 “The great United States of America, just north of us, have capital punishment,” Mr Miller said. “The European countries have capital punishment.”

 “We wouldn’t execute it, because you know why?”

“Those so-called upper Bahamians don’t want no part of it until somebody kill one of their family members. Then it’ll change.”

 Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander has called the increase in violent crime alarming.

 Last week, he renewed calls for changes to the Bail Act after expressing concern about the short timeframe in which people accused of serious crimes are being granted bail.

 Meanwhile, Prime Minister Phillip “Brave” Davis has invited the Bahamas Christian Council to hold a national day of prayer for healing and comfort in response to the increasing murders.

 He said more will be said in the coming weeks about “a strategic initiative to implement a whole government response to tackling gang crime”.