Death Penalty in the English Speaking Caribbean

Download or read book Death Penalty in the English Speaking Caribbean written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and violates the right to life. The UN General Assembly has adopted resolutions calling on member states to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty. However, the countries of the English-speaking Caribbean, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago, have consistently opposed such international initiatives for worldwide abolition. Although executions are rare in the English-speaking Caribbean, death sentences continue to be handed down. This report counters the myth that the death penalty is an effective deterrent by highlighting the lack of any convincing evidence that it reduces violent crime. It also looks at how countries of the English-speaking Caribbean continue to fall short of their international human rights obligations and indeed of their own laws, for example by sentencing people with mental disability to death. It also examines how people facing the death penalty are denied due process, including through the use of the mandatory death sentence in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. The report ends with a series of recommendations to the authorities, calling on them to fulfill their international human rights obligations.