Barbados retains a mandatory death penalty or murder and treason.

Barbados retains a mandatory death penalty or murder and treason. In 1990 Barbados abolished the death penalty for juveniles. The last execution carried out in Barbados was in 1984, when three men were hung on the same day.
In 2004 the constitutionality of the mandatory nature of the death penalty in Barbados was upheld by the country’s highest court, which is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in London as Barbados is a British Independent Territory.
The legal challenge against the mandatory death penalty claimed it was unconstitutional. It was based on the grounds that the constitution of Barbados protects individuals from "inhuman or degrading punishment" or "cruel and unusual treatment or punishment".
The Privy Council - sitting in full court comprising all nine judges instead of the usual panels of five - on July 6, 2004, unanimously confirmed that the mandatory death penalty is inhuman and degrading and contrary to international human rights law.
However it was divided on the constitutionality of the death penalty in Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago, that was also challenged on the same grounds. With five votes to four, the Privy Council found that the clear wording of the constitutions of these two countries, unlike that of the constitutions of other Caribbean countries, barred them from striking the mandatory death penalty down as unconstitutional. The majority found that the constitutions protected individuals from "inhuman or degrading punishment" or "cruel and unusual treatment or punishment", but they had provisions protecting laws already existing at the time the constitutions were written - such as those instituting the automatic death penalty for murderers - from being invalidated by the constitutions. The mandatory death penalty in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago was thus upheld.
In recent years the use of the death penalty has become the focus of attention during appeals. British authorities and human rights groups are seeking to get executions halted, despite Barbados, in common with many Caribbean nations, viewing the death penalty as a deterrent to crime.
Barbados took the first step towards removing restrictions to the death penalty on August 13, 2002. The two houses of parliament passed the Constitutional (Amendment) Act 2002 approving amendments to: preserve the mandatory death sentence; remove delay and prison conditions as a reason for commutation and make these issues immune from future legal challenges and place time limits on appeals to international human rights bodies.
The new legislation was aimed to address the mitigating effects of the 1993 Pratt and Morgan ruling by the JCPC, which limits to five years the time a prisoner can be kept on death row. The new law was also designed to forestall a March 2002 decision outlawing mandatory death sentences in seven Eastern Caribbean countries from being applied to Barbados. Adoption of the amendment means that previous rulings of the JCPC binding on Barbados will not apply to future cases.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on January 21, 2003 informed Barbados that the amendment to render the mandatory death sentence immune from constitutional challenge contravenes its treaty obligations under the American Convention. Barbados had not responded by mid-2004.
Barbados was one of the eleven states that signed an agreement in 2001 to establish the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to replace the Privy Council as the region’s final court of appeal. The region’s leaders viewed the setting up of the Court as a way of shedding the last vestiges of colonialism.
"We will spare no resource to ensure that the Caribbean Court of Justice is celebrated as an icon of Caribbean achievement and an inspiration of what we can do together and achieve," said the Barbados prime minister, Owen Arthur.
In September 2002, Barbados passed a constitutional amendment enabling it to switch to the CCJ, inaugurated in Trinidad on April 16, 2005. Human rights groups have expressed concern that the Court will be a hanging court, expediting the use of the death penalty in the region.