In 2004, the Lahore High Court confirmed the Presidential Order. It ruled that a juvenile under sentence of death, whose case had been decided before the promulgation of the JJSO is still entitled to the protection of the JJSO. It asserted the retrospective effect of the JJSO in all cases, even those where the death sentences had been confirmed by the superior courts. The judgment related to the case of Sikander Hayat and Jamshed Ali who were both under 18 at the time of the alleged murder and whose death warrants had been issued. The District and Sessions judge in Jhelum, where the juveniles had originally been tried, had refused to commute the death sentences, as the Supreme Court had confirmed them. Despite the existence of the Notification and the letter by the Government of Punjab, juveniles sentenced prior to the enactment of the JJSO continue to be denied its protections. Requests by prisoners and/or family members for an inquiry regarding their juvenility under the Presidential Notification continue to be denied by the provincial Home Departments and the Courts. This includes requests made by those prisoners whose names were included in the list in the letter from the Home Department, Government of Punjab dated 18 August 2003. An analysis of case studies reveals that there is simply a lack of awareness regarding the effect of the Notification amongst the provincial home departments and the Sessions Judges who are responsible for its implementation. Sessions Judges invariably refuse to overturn decisions of the Appellate Courts despite the existence of credible evidence in support of juvenility. Courts frequently deny requests for age determination for juveniles sentenced prior to the enactment of the JJSO on the grounds that on account of all appeals having been exhausted the question of the age cannot be reopened or even worse, that a plea of juvenility may only be raised during the investigation or trial. Therefore, the accused persons are often caught in an impossible situation – the JJSO was not in existence at the start of their proceedings and they can no longer rely upon it as it is too late. Muhammad Anwar was sentenced to death in 1998 for a crime allegedly committed when he was just 17 years old. Following the 2001 special remission, his family submitted an application to the Home Department requesting that he be granted the special remission on the basis of his age. Although an age determination inquiry was initiated by the Home Department – which gathered contemporaneous birth records showing Anwar to have been a juvenile at the time of the offence – this inquiry was never completed due to the decision in Ziaullah set out above. Since then, Anwar’s family have tried every possible means to request an age determination from the Sessions Court, submitting no fewer than four applications. In over a decade and a half, however, no forum has ever taken a final decision on this issue. In December 2014 Anwar came within hours of execution and he remains at serious risk of receiving another execution warrant. Muhammad Azam was another juvenile offender who was arrested in 1998 for murder and convicted and sentenced to death by an Anti-Terrorism Court vide judgment dated 8 July 1999 - prior to the promulgation of the JJSO. Copies of his birth records, jail records, including a copy of the birth roll all confirm that he was 17 when he was first admitted into custody. Jail records also demonstrate that Azam was initially held in Youthful Offenders Industrial School Karachi – a borstal institution specially designed for juvenile offenders. Following the 2001 Notification the jail authorities, on 9 August 2004, sent a request to the trial Court asking the Court to make a determination of Muhammad Azam’s age to ascertain whether his sentence should be commuted. The request was however rejected by the court on the basis that no plea of majority was raised during the course of the trial and on the basis that the trial court was already functus officio following the conclusion of the appeals. 36 http://www.dawn.com/news/350914/islamabad-no-death-sentence-for-juveniles-lhc DEATH ROW’S CHILDREN 20