Amnesty International Report 1997 - Bahamas

Two people were hanged in the first executions to be carried out for 12 years. At least seven new death sentences were imposed; four prisoners had their death sentences commuted. More than 30 prisoners remained under sentence of death. Thomas Reckley, sentenced to death for murder in 1990, was hanged in March. He was the first person to be executed in the Bahamas since 1984. His execution went ahead despite a 1993 decision given in a Jamaican case by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in London, the final court of appeal for the Bahamas, that execution after a delay of more than five years would be presumed to constitute inhuman or degrading punishment and therefore grounds for commutation (see Amnesty International Report 1996). The JCPC turned down an application for a stay of execution on the day he was hanged, without giving reasons. Dwayne McKinney, sentenced to death in 1992, was also hanged in March. Warrants for the execution of five more prisoners were signed during the year but all received stays of execution pending further appeals. At least seven people were sentenced to death for murder. Four prisoners had their death sentences commuted. In October, the JCPC commuted the death sentences on Dwight Henfield and Ricardo Farrington in a ruling likely to affect other capital cases in the Bahamas. Dwight Henfield's death sentence had been commuted by the Bahamas Supreme Court in 1995 (see Amnesty International Report 1996) but was reinstated by the Bahamas Court of Appeal in April 1996, following a governmental appeal. In October, the JCPC overturned the appeal court's ruling on the ground that to execute Dwight Henfield after nearly seven years' delay would constitute inhuman punishment. The JCPC dealt with the case of Ricardo Farrington in the same decision. Although Ricardo Farrington had been on death row for only three years and four months, the JCPC ruled that a shorter time-span than the five years given in its 1993 decision was sufficient to render an execution in the Bahamas inhuman or degrading punishment. This was established on the basis that in the Jamaican case the JCPC had taken account of the time required to lodge an application with the UN Human Rights Committee under the (First) Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a procedure not available to defendants in the Bahamas. The JCPC set a guideline of three and a half years within which the appeal process in the Bahamas would be expected to be completed, and held that Farrington, who was nearing this limit, should also benefit and have his death sentence commuted. Two further prisoners had their death sentences commuted in July by prerogative of mercy. More than 30 other prisoners remained on death row at the end of the year. Following the execution of Thomas Reckley and Dwayne McKinney, Amnesty International wrote to the government expressing deep regret at this retrograde step. It called for all death sentences to be commuted.