Bring back the noose

last updated 8 January 2015

Barbados

With crime in the British Caribbean depressing tourism, island government leaders are calling for re-establishment of the death penalty. Capital punishment in the British Caribbean territories was virtually barred by a 1993 British court ruling, which held that no execution may be carried out more than five years after sentencing. The court had jurisdiction over Barbados, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the British Virgin Islands, where defense lawyers routinely began to file multiple appeals, guaranteeing the deadline would pass. But jurisdiction has since been turned over to a regional court, and last week, Barbados petitioned that panel to overturn the five-year limit, so it can hang two men convicted of a brutal murder in 1999. The last execution in the region was a hanging in the Bahamas, in 2000.