substantiated, that detention may constitute a violation of articles 7 and/or 10, paragraph 1, of the Covenant. determining a definite period of detention on death row, after which there will be a presumption that detention on death row constitutes cruel and inhuman punishment. Setting a cut-off date certainly exacerbates the problem and gives the State party a clear deadline for executing a person if it is to avoid violating its obligations under the Covenant. However, this implication is not a function of fixing the maximum permissible period of detention on death row, but of making the time factor, per se, the determining one. If the maximum acceptable period is left open, States parties which seek to avoid overstepping the deadline will be tempted to look to the decisions of the Committee in previous cases so as to determine what length of detention on death row the Committee has found permissible in the past. 5.7 In this case, counsel has not alleged the existence of circumstances, over and above the mere length of detention, which would have turned the author’s detention on death row at the State Prison into a violation of articles 7 and 10, paragraph 1. As the Committee must, under article 5, paragraph 1, of the Optional Protocol, consider the communication in the light of all the information of the parties, the Committee cannot, in the absence of information on additional factors, conclude that there has been a violation of these provisions. 6. The Human Rights Committee, acting under article 5, paragraph 4, of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is of the view that the facts before the Committee do not reveal a violation by Trinidad and Tobago of any of the provisions of the Covenant. 5.5 The second implication of making the time factor per se the determining one, i.e. the factor that turns detention on death row into a violation of the Covenant, is that it conveys a message to States parties retaining the death penalty that they should carry out a capital sentence as expeditiously as possible after it was imposed. This is not a message the Committee would wish to convey to States parties. Life on death row, harsh as it may be, is preferable to death. Furthermore, experience shows that delays in carrying out the death penalty can be the necessary consequence of several factors, many of which may be attributable to the State party. Sometimes a moratorium is placed on executions while the whole question of the death penalty is under review. At other times the executive branch of government delays executions even though it is not feasible politically to abolish the death penalty. The Committee would wish to avoid adopting a line of jurisprudence which weakens the influence of factors that may very well lessen the number of prisoners actually executed. It should be stressed that by adopting the approach that prolonged detention on death row cannot, per se, be regarded as cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment under the Covenant, the Committee does not wish to convey the impression that keeping condemned prisoners on death row for many years is an acceptable way of treating them. It is not. However, the cruelty of the death row phenomenon is first and foremost a function of the permissibility of capital punishment under the Covenant. This situation has unfortunate consequences. 7. The Committee welcomes the commutation of Mr. Bickaroo’s death sentence by the State party’s authorities in December 1993. APPENDIX Individual opinion submitted by Mr. Fausto Pocar, Mr. Prafullchandra Natwarlal Bhagwati, Ms. Christine Chanet, Ms. Pilar Gaitan de Pombo and Mr. Julio Prado Vallejo and Mr. Maxwell Yalden pursuant to rule 94, paragraph 3, of the Committee’s rules of procedure, concerning the Views of the Committee on communication No. 555/1993, Ramcharan Bickaroo v. Trinidad and Tobago The Committee reiterates in the present cases the views that prolonged detention on death row cannot per se constitute a violation of article 7 of the Covenant. This view reflects a lack of flexibility that would not allow the Committee to examine the circumstances of each case, in order to determine whether, in a given case, prolonged detention on death row constitutes cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of the abovementioned provision. This approach leads the Committee to conclude, in the present cases, that detention on death row for almost sixteen/eighteen years after the exhaustion of local remedies does not allow a finding of violation of article 7. We cannot agree with this conclusion. Keeping a person detained on death row for so many years, after exhaustion of domestic remedies, and in the absence of any further explanation of the State party as to the reasons thereof, constitutes in itself cruel and inhuman treatment. It should have been for the State party to explain the reasons requiring or justifying such prolonged detention on death row; however, no justification was offered by the State party in the present cases. 5.6 To accept that prolonged detention on death row does not, per se, constitute a violation of articles 7 and 10, does not imply that other circumstances connected with detention on death row may not turn that detention into cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The Committee’s jurisprudence has been that where further compelling circumstances relating to the detention are Even assuming, as the majority of the Committee does, that prolonged detention on death row cannot per se constitute a violation of article 7 of the Covenant, the circumstances of the present communication would in any 88