BARBADOS. HUGGINS GETS STAY OF EXECUTION

29 year old Michael Mcdonald Huggins, set to die in Barbados on May 23 for murder, was temporarily spared from execution. Huggins, whose death warrant had been read the previous week – the second time in just under three years – had been granted a stay of execution by the High Court.
It was understood that the stay was pending the outcome of a petition before the Barbados Court of Appeal by two other death row inmates, Lennox Joseph and Jeffrey Boyce. Huggins had been sentenced to death for the 1999 Independence Day murder of 21-year-old Stephen Wharton and had appealed to the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council in London after that conviction. In 2004 the Privy Council ruled that Huggins’ conviction was not “unsafe” but decided to stay the appeal against the mandatory death sentence until the outcome of the appeal by Boyce and Joseph.