Death Penalty News

FOUR convicted killers housed in the condemned section of the Port of Spain prison at Frederick Street for decades have had their death sentences vacated. In declaring that any attempt to carry out the death sentence on the four would be in contravention of their constitutional rights, Justice Margaret Mohammed ordered that they be immediately removed from death row. She also ordered that the four be resentenced by a judge in the Criminal Assizes.

On Human Rights Day, Saturday 10 December, 2022, the Greater Caribbean for Life (GCL) urges Caribbean leaders and citizens in our region, to reflect on the fact that the theme this year: Dignity, Freedom and Justice for All, is in keeping with GCL’s goal of achieving regional/global abolition of the death penalty. The dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society. The use of the death penalty is not consistent with promoting the dignity of offenders. GCL believes that society has a right to protect itself from persons who commit heinous crimes and offenders must be held accountable. However, we believe that non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect society from offenders. To date, 170 States have abolished or introduced a moratorium on the death penalty either in law or in practice. There are 55 retentionist countries in the world. According to Amnesty International, in 2021 most known executions took place in China, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia a...

The guillotine is one of the most recognizable execution devices in the world. The iconic appearance of the fearsome angled blade ranks up there with the gallows and the cross as the more prominent images of human execution.  The guillotine dominated a gruesome part of European history and continues to engage the imagination to this day. But the guillotine was never supposed to become the killing machine that it did. When the French physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin advocated for the use of the beheading device as a method of execution, he could not have known that it would be used to kill thousands of his countrymen. The guillotine was initially invented as a mercy device. It was supposed to be a modernization of Medieval execution methods that had grown gory and inhumane. Enlightened people could not bear to kill people in such ways any longer. There had to be a better way. Those condemned to die should not also have to be tortured en-route to their final punishment. A death pena...

"30 years of visiting death row clients has taught me that these are vulnerable, damaged people, often with severe mental illness — while most have not had fair trials.” Saul Lehrfreund admits that last Friday was unusually rewarding. “When I went to work that morning, Sierra Leone still had the death penalty and there were 80 or 90 prisoners on death row,” he says. “When I left the office that evening, its parliament had voted to abolish it, and death row didn’t exist. All those prisoners, who’ve spent years expecting to be hanged — some will now be judged to have served their time, and released.” Lehrfreund has spent almost three decades fighting to save condemned inmates’ lives around the world. He and his colleagues — including, notably, a certain Keir Starmer QC — have won some highly significant cases, which have seen innocent people walk free and the numbers of death sentences and executions in several Commonwealth countries drastically reduced. But the decision taken by S...

The Privy Council has today overturned the conviction of a Bahamian man who represented himself in a murder trial in which the prosecution sought the imposition of the death penalty.  In May 2013, Simeon Bain, who had limited education and poor reading ability, was convicted of the murder of Rashad Morris and other related offences, after his counsel withdrew at the start of the trial and he was left to conduct the trial himself. While noting there is no absolute right to representation, the Privy Council observed that it is highly desirable that a defendant in a murder trial facing the death penalty should be continuously represented.  The Privy Council described Mr Bain’s case as one of “serious mismanagement” by the trial judge and that “had he been represented the evidence may well have been materially different.” Ultimately, this deprived Mr Bain of a fair trial. Saul Lehrfreund, Co-Executive Director of The Death Penalty Project says: “This decisio...

“The Death Penalty Project” on 7 April 2020 published its latest report: “ Sentenced to Death Without Execution: Why capital punishment has not yet been abolished in the Eastern Caribbean and Barbados ” by Professor Roger Hood and Dr Florence Seemungal with the assistance of attorney-at-law Amaya Athill.  This research study provides new empirical evidence based on the opinions of informed, influential citizens of why, in all the 6 member states of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and Barbados, the death penalty remains on their statute books even though no persons have been executed for many years.  The last execution in the region was carried out in St Kitts and Nevis in 2008. No one has been executed in the other countries for more than 20 years and in Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia and Barbados for more than 30 years.  Nine of the 12 Commonwealth Caribbean countries (including all jurisdictions addressed in this study, except for Barbado...

(JAMAICA GLEANER) —   Jamaica’s top prosecutor has disclosed that she will be seeking the death penalty for the five men who are set to go on trial for allegedly beheading a St Catherine woman and her teen daughter in a double murder that stirred national outrage. The disclosure came after Paula Llewellyn, director of public prosecutions, revealed that one of the accused killers, Kemar Riley, divulged “certain things” to a cellmate in what was “tantamount to a jailhouse confession”. He was later pointed out to police investigators by the person to whom he made the confession, Llewellyn said. Further, she revealed that the other four men gave video-recorded caution statements to detectives in the presence of their attorneys. “We have served a death notice and it is a capital murder indictment we are using,” Llewellyn announced yesterday in the Home Circuit Court, where the five men were set to go on trial for the July 2011 killings. CRIMINAL CHARGES R...

The British Government will be pushing for changes to the treatment of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community in Jamaica as part of its efforts to promote shared values with regional states. Outlining the United Kingdom's Strategy for the Caribbean, its six Overeseas Territories in the region and Bermuda up to 2025, British High Commissioner to Jamaica Asif Anwar Ahmad yesterday told journalists that the strategy has three pillars — partners on values, partners on prosperity, and partners on protecting people. According to Ahmad, the strategy calls for increased support for the region on the UK's priorities which include good governance, human rights and democracy, including issues such as the death penalty and LGBT rights. He noted that Jamaica already scores high in areas such as press freedom, democracy and freedom of religion, but said the UK will be pushing on other areas including shared positions in international fora. “We have no exp...

Several MEPs say Brussels should link the abolition of the death penalty in African and other states with a landmark cooperation agreement currently being thrashed out between the EU and Africa. The Cotonou Partnership Agreement between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries is due to expire on 29 February 2020 and the new agreement is currently being finalised by the two sides. At a briefing in Brussels on Tuesday, Moraes was one of three MEPs who spoke about conditionality between EU funds and human rights compliance with countries linked to the EU by international agreements such as the ACP countries (African Caribbean Pacific) and the Cotonou agreement. Moraes, who chairs Parliament’s civil liberties committee, described the death penalty as “abhorrent”, saying that victims were often “tortured, abused and threatened” before being killed. He said, “There must be something badly wrong with any country that feels the need to have the death penalty. Afr...

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — The London-based international human rights organisation, Amnesty International, says while it welcomes a “significant reduction” in the application of the use of the death penalty in the English-speaking Caribbean in recent years, it is urging all regional countries to abolish it. “As the English-speaking Caribbean marks its first decade as an execution-free region, Amnesty International congratulates those governments who have recognised the ultimate cruelty of the death penalty and renews its calls on them and all other states that still retain this punishment to take further steps to abolish it for good,” Amnesty International said in a statement at year-end. It said figures on the use of the death penalty in the English-speaking Caribbean indicate that there has been a significant reduction in the application of this punishment in recent years. According to Amnesty International, only half of the 12 English-speaking Caribbean countries h...