BAHAMAS: AG STRESSES DEATH PENALTY STILL LEGAL

despite the fact that there have been no hangings in The Bahamas since the year 2000, hangings are still on the books and could still be carried out, Attorney General Claire Hepburn said. More than a year after the Privy Council ruled that the mandatory death penalty in The Bahamas is unconstitutional, it is clear that many people do not understand the decision in the case of Forrester Bowe and Trono Davis, she said. In that decision, the law lords said the death penalty is discretionary, not mandatory. "The Privy Council did not overrule the death penalty," Mrs. Hepburn said. "It simply said that the mandatory death penalty was unconstitutional." The attorney general explained that this does not mean that the court cannot hand down death penalty sentences. "The courts will now have to consider the circumstances of the case before arriving at that determination whereas in the past when you were convicted of murder you were automatically sentenced to death," she said. As was explained by the former attorney general, Allyson Maynard Gibson, after the landmark ruling, Mrs. Hepburn said the courts will now have to go back to all of those cases where the death penalty was applied and re-sentence those persons. It’s a process that has already started.