REPRIEVE CELEBRATED WITH RUM

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31802, 5 October 1968, Page 7

REPRIEVE CELEBRATED WITH RUM

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) ROAD TOWN (Tortola, British Virgin Islands).

Almost 11 months after being convicted of murder, Arnold Callwood, aged 28, a native Virgin Islander, has had news that the death sentence passed on him has been commuted to life imprisonment. He is said to have celebrated the news with a tot of rum before joining a working party which is helping to clear scrub and undergrowth from an area of Road Town set aside for development by the Government. The murder took place on the night of September 3, 1966. Callwood, according to witnesses, went berserk and,

armed with a cutlass, attacked Roy Coakley, against whom he held a grudge. The attack took place just outside the settlement at Great Harbour, on the Island of Jost van Dyke, named after a famous Dutch privateer, and one of the larger of more than 50 islands, rocks and cays making up the territory of the British Virgin Islands. Callwood came to his senses the next morning and gave himself up. The only policeman on the island was puzzled because there had not been a case of murder in the Territory for some 30 to 35 years. A posse was sent by boat from Road Town, capital of the sleepy islands, and Callwood was .-ommitted for trial at the local court, which also serves as the Legislative Chamber and as a meeting place for various public and Government commissions. A travelling judge comes to the Virgin Islands about once every three or four months and at the Assize Court Callwood was found guilty and sentenced to death, the only penalty prescribed. Officials in the islands then found themselves confronted with the fact that the nearest gallows was in Antigua, some 200 miles away, and that there was nothing that could be called a maximum security cell in Road Town. The prisons are like dungeons and prisoners are put on their honour not to escape. Callwood was given help to appeal against conviction to the Court of Appeal in the West Indies Associated States

Supreme Court and to the Privy Council in Britain. During the first week of October, news came that the Privy Council had rejected the appeal. The final decision as to whether Callwood should live or die lay with the Administrator, Mr lan Thomson, Queen Elizabeth’s representative in the British Virgin Islands. On October 18, it was announced that he had decided to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment. Mr Thomson said that he could find no reason for granting a pardon. Among the reports considered by the Administrator before reaching his decision was one from the trial judge, Mr Justice Heyliger, who said that although Callwood was not legally insane he “did not act like a normal human being” on the night of the murder. In view of this, and the fact that capital punishment was on its way out, the Judge said that the case might be a suitable one for granting a reprieve. The British Virgin Islands have one of the highest rates of mental ill-health in the Caribbean, an area where these disorders are common. But murder is an incongruous crime and "tieffing" (thieving) is usually the most serious offence.

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