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A pardon for Nora Parham?

Posted: Saturday, February 5, 2022. 7:15 pm CST.

By Aaron Humes: Minister of Human Development, Families and Indigenous People’s Affairs Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, has suggested that the House of Representatives could position itself to grant a posthumous pardon to the only woman ever to be capitally punished in Belize (British Honduras at the time), Nora Parham.

As stated by Minister Balderamos-Garcia at the close of the debate on the Domestic Violence Motion, 2022, “…it is known that little Nora Parham, 5 feet tall, a little East Indian lady, was the victim of severe intimate partner violence and domestic violence at the hands of her policeman partner. We know that her end was a sad and tragic one and a stain on our history of this country. I only want to put on record, Madam Speaker, that perhaps it is time for the Nora Parham story to be told and written for posterity and for Belizeans to know that perhaps this Honourable House one day soon will find it within ourselves to grant Miss Nora Parham a posthumous pardon.”

The Punta Gorda native, 36, a mother of eight sons including two toddlers, was convicted in 1963 by an all-male jury of the murder of her police officer partner Ketchell Trapp by immolation in Orange Walk Town. The case was extensively covered in the newspapers of the time and in 2009 by Amandala’s Adele Ramos, who spoke to living family members and witnesses who believe Parham should not have been executed on the basis of what might today be called battered women’s syndrome – Trapp had admittedly struck Nora earlier in the evening and was known to abuse her – as well as conflicting reports as how Trapp had been burned. The jury had recommended mercy after finding her guilty but there was no appeal process and the Governor Sir Peter Stallard, supported by the now-ruling People’s United Party’s Belize Times newspaper at the time, allowed the execution at the former prison on Gaol Lane, Belize City (now the Museum of Belize).

According to Amandala’s report in 2009, one of Parham’s surviving sons, Dean Williams, claimed that the Queen herself had been told of the impending execution and agreed to a stay, but the news came too late to save Nora.

While Trapp was given a proper burial, history shows that Parham was buried in an unmarked grave in June 1963.

 

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