Setting Limits
The CCJ anticipated some of the arguments that might be made against the use of legitimate expectations in this context. As a result, it cautioned that any �protracted delay on the part of the international body in disposing of the proceedings initiated before it by a condemned person, would justify the State, notwithstanding the existence of the condemned man’s legitimate expectation, proceedings to carry out an execution before completion of the international process.’[641] In light of the agenda of these human rights bodies to abolish the death penalty throughout their member states, they could very well, in light of the CCJ’s judgment, prolong their processes to extend the period of the condemned person on death row, with the result that the Pratt[642] time limit would be breached, resulting in commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment.
This qualification by the CCJ preserves the right of the state to act as it so desires, despite the legitimate expectation, when there is an inexcusable and protracted delay in determining such cases before those international bodies. The rationale for this, the CCJ noted, was grounded in either the legitimate expectation itself, meaning that it would last so long as there was no undue delay from the international bodies, or that the legitimate expectation may properly be thwarted by �an overriding public interest in support of which the state may justifiably modify its compliance with the treaty.’[643]The CCJ, therefore, concluded that the reading of the death warrants to the respondents breached their legitimate expectations and it also �constituted a breach of [their] right to the protection of the law.’[644] In one sentence, the CCJ unwittingly gave constitutional status to a concept that had only just breathed life less than eight years prior, and whose boundaries are still being delineated. That newly-found constitutional principle �can only be defeated by some overriding interest of the State.’[645] If the state �imposes reasonable time limits within which a condemned man’ may appeal to such international bodies, then it cannot be said that in so doing the state has not shown a good faith intention to abide by its treaty obligations.[646] Even if such a right to petition such bodies exists, the state �cannot reasonably be expected to delay indefinitely the carrying out of a sentence, even a sentence of death, lawfully passed by its domestic courts pending the completion of a petition by an international body.’[647] This was stressed repeatedly by the CCJ, indicating that although its conclusion mirrors that of Lewis �save that the obligation of the State to await the outcome of the international process is not in our judgment open-ended,’ it followed a different route.[648]
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