Independent Senator Karina Goodridge is calling on Government to ensure legislation moving through Parliament should never be written in a way to cause uncertainty or “confusion” to members of the public.
Goodridge, president of the Friends of Democracy, was interrupted several times yesterday and had some points struck from the record during her presentation on the Domestic Terrorism Bill, 2026, in the Senate chamber.
Attorney General Wilfred Abrahams, who introduced the Bill to the Senate, and Government Senator Ramon Alleyne, both rose on points of order or elucidation during her address.
She said although it was only five pages long, it “raises significant legal questions”, including overlaps with existing legislation.
“It has the possibility to raise questions of the breadth, the vagueness and the overlapping of the statutes, the incorporation of offences pretty much from other enactments, or let me rephrase that and say, looking at other statutes in Barbados that could fall under that scope or threshold of serious criminal offence and the treatment of the same conduct as both an aggravating factor and a separate offence,” Goodridge pointed out in her summation.
“I would suggest that these matters be greatly explained and resolved before the Bill is passed, because before it goes out to the public who will scrutinise and who will look to the legislation as one that they should follow again, Sir, the law must be certain and clear for them.”
Goodridge is an attorney and one of her major concerns was the removal of “the usual judicial discretion to determine whether sentences should run concurrently or consecutively”. She called on Abrahams to explain this.
“Judges do usually have the discretion whether to make sentences run concurrently or consecutively, this does take that away. I accept that; it was intended to take it away because the domestic terrorism is a charge that stands by itself, is a separate offence,” he explained.
“The discharging your firearm in public or discharging your firearm or possession of firearm might be the initial offence – a serious criminal offence – but the circumstances of the public aspect and the striking fear in the heart of other people is any domestic terrorism offence so your sentence would not probably be subsumed under the initial charge.”
Abrahams said judges retained the discretion to impose a sentence of life imprisonment, but it does not mean it will be done.
“For certain we are taking away the discretion that the sentencing for domestic terrorism must run consecutively with the other sentence that constitutes serious criminal offence, so when you finish that sentence whether it’s probation or whatnot, your sentence is stuck to domestic terrorism.”
The issue of possible double penalisation was also raised by Goodridge. She noted there could be cases where an underlying criminal offence is being punished, then it may constitute domestic terrorism and earn a consecutive sentence.
“That raised a serious concern to me about double penalisation or what we would call double counting of the same conduct. So I would say that we would need to explain really in more detail where the same element of conduct should both increase the sentence for the underlying offence and then form the basis for a separate offence carrying an additional or consecutive sentence,” Goodridge appealed.
Abrahams addressed some of the queries raised and promised a sub-clause under question would be deleted, but the Bill was passed before debate moved on to the Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Record Bill, 2026. (SAT)
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