2000 coup leader, George Speight who has been serving time for over 20 years, has applied for a presidential pardon as he wants to be released from prison.<\/p>\n
When questioned by fijivillage News today, Attorney General and Chair of the Mercy Commission, Siromi Turaga confirms that Speight has made an application and the consideration process is underway.<\/p>\n
According to the 2013 Constitution, on the petition of any convicted person, the Commission may recommend that the President exercise a power of mercy by granting a free or conditional pardon to a person convicted of an offence; remitting all or a part of a punishment.<\/p>\n
The Commission may dismiss a petition that it reasonably considers to be frivolous, vexatious or entirely without merit, but otherwise must consider a report on the case prepared by the Judge who presided at the trial; or the Chief Justice, if a report cannot be obtained from the presiding Judge; must consider any other information derived from the record of the case or elsewhere that is available to the Commission; and may consider the views of the victims of the offence.<\/p>\n
The Constitution states that the President must act in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission.<\/p>\n
Source Fijivillage.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
2000 coup leader, George Speight who has been serving time for over 20 years, has applied for a presidential pardon as he wants to be released from prison. When questioned by fijivillage News today, Attorney General and Chair of the Mercy Commission, Siromi Turaga confirms that Speight has made an application and the consideration process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiji-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5051,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049\/revisions\/5051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}