§ Lord Aveburyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the Commonwealth has a role in individual human rights cases, and, if so, whether they will ask the appropriate organ of the Commonwealth to raise with the Jamaican authorities the case of Mr. Clifton Wright, who was sentenced to death by hanging on 29th March 1983, on a charge of murder, was subsequently found to have been in police custody on the date the crime was committed, and nevertheless remains in custody, notwithstanding intercession for his release by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on 14th September 1988, and a similar initiative by the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
§ Baroness Chalker of WallaseyAlthough in exceptional cases the Commonwealth may raise individual human rights cases at a political level, the mandate of the Commonwealth Secretariat's Human Rights Unit does not extend to individual cases.
In October 1987, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London considered Clifton Wright's application for leave to appeal to Her Majesty in Council and dismissed it. A further appeal was rejected by the Privy Council in Jamaica in 1994. Separately, Mr. Wright's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1995.
The allegation that Clifton Wright could not have committed the murder because he was in custody at the time was raised by counsel on his behalf at the Privy Council hearing.