Mental health assessments “long overdue” in Trinidad and Tobago death penalty cases

After decades of subjecting individuals with mental illness, developmental and intellectual disabilities to the mandatory death sentence, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has directed that Trinidad and Tobago must introduce “long overdue” mental health assessments for defendants accused of serious crimes.

In a judgment issued on 22 May 2026, the Privy Council ruled that our client, Uriah Woods, should succeed in his appeal. The Board held that fresh medical evidence – and its potential to support the defence of diminished responsibility – should now be considered by the Court of Appeal of Trinidad and Tobago in relation to Mr Woods’ murder conviction and the resulting automatic death sentence.

On 9 July 2015, Uriah Woods was convicted of the murder of his former partner, Sandra Miller, and sentenced to death by hanging. New evidence from two psychiatrists and a psychologist indicates that, at the time of the offence, Mr Woods’ ability to understand his actions, form rational judgments and exercise self-control may have been significantly impaired. He presents with features consistent with a delusional disorder, and his IQ score of 53 places him within the lowest 0.1% of the population, strongly indicating the presence of a neurodevelopmental disorder.

Despite this, Uriah Woods had never been assessed by a mental health professional by the time of his trial nor when he appealed to the Court of Appeal. He has instead spent over a decade languishing on death row, living under the constant threat of execution.

In the judgment, the Privy Council recognised that Mr Woods “found himself in a penal system which appears to have offered no assistance for the recognition and evaluation of any state of delusional derangement he might in fact have been in, the state of mind that the experts also now opined to have been operative at the time of his offence.”

In criticising the State’s failure to assess Mr Woods’ mental condition, the Board stressed that States are obliged to carry out psychiatric evaluations as a matter of course, particularly in capital cases. The judges went on to urge the Court of Appeal of Trinidad and Tobago to issue “long overdue guidelines for the routine assessment of the mental state of defendants.”

International law expressly prohibits the use of the death penalty on individuals living with mental illness or intellectual and developmental disabilities – a principle affirmed by the World Psychiatric Association in 2023. States therefore have specific legal obligations to ensure that robust procedures are in place to assess the mental state of all individuals accused of serious crimes.

It is vital that courts and criminal justice professionals understand how a mental health condition may affect an individual, as this understanding is central to determining fitness to stand trial, the availability of defences such as insanity and diminished responsibility and the assessment of culpability at sentencing.

In the absence of this understanding, individuals with mental illness and intellectual and developmental disabilities are systemically disadvantaged throughout the criminal justice process. This may include being more vulnerable to giving false confessions, less able to assist legal counsel in preparing a defence and an increased likelihood of being perceived by a jury as inarticulate or unsympathetic. Speech or behaviour may also be misinterpreted as indicating a lack of remorse.

These vulnerabilities, combined with under-resourced justice systems that often fail to identify or accommodate them, mean that individuals living with mental illness and intellectual and developmental disabilities are significantly more likely to end up on death row and be executed.

Regrettably, Uriah Woods’ case does not exist in isolation – it is one example of Trinidad and Tobago’s continued disregard for their duties under international law.

In its judgment, the Privy Council referred to the cases of our previous clients Jay Chandler, Neil Hernandez and Lester Pitman, where we identified comparable failures by the State. The Board found it similarly unsatisfactory in these cases that mental health assessments were not carried out, specifically directing in Pitman & Hernandez that, “a person with a significant learning disability might be an example of someone whose mental functioning is significantly impaired and therefore entitled to constitutional protection from the infliction of the death penalty.”

This is a trend we have also witnessed in the wider Caribbean. Our work uncovering miscarriages of justice has historically overlapped with protecting the rights of defendants with mental illness, who are too often subjected to cruel and inhuman punishments. We continue to call for abolition of the death penalty in the region and are currently mounting a direct challenge to the legality of the death penalty in the Eastern Caribbean.

Habitually subjecting people with mental illness and intellectual and developmental disabilities to the horrors of death row is a failure of the highest order. Trinidad and Tobago has been reminded of this by the Court on numerous occasions. The State must act without delay to introduce the internationally mandated safeguards for individuals accused of serious offences.

The State should also honour the commitment it made to the international community in 2022 to review its use of the mandatory death penalty. In Trinidad and Tobago, capital punishment remains automatic for certain offences: once a person is convicted of murder, the judge has no choice but to impose a death sentence. The ability for judges to properly consider individual mitigating circumstances is a cornerstone of any fair justice system, and a vital safeguard for people with mental illness and intellectual and developmental disabilities. It is another safeguard Mr Woods was denied – one that could have been transformative in his case.

We look forward to ensuring Mr Woods’ case is heard before the Court of Appeal and hope to see his death sentence quashed in due course.