Hundreds of prisoners on death row in the Caribbean...

Hundreds of prisoners on death row in the Caribbean were given new hope as the Privy Council in Britain declared the mandatory death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago unconstitutional.
The ruling meant that 84 death-row inmates in Trinidad and Tobago would have their sentences reconsidered.
The Privy Council - composed of UK law lords sitting as a final court of appeal for some of Britain's former colonies - reached the decision by the narrow majority of three to two.
Lords Steyn, Bingham and Walker decided the mandatory death sentence was inconsistent with the international obligations of Trinidad and Tobago, and unconstitutional. Lords Millett and Rodger dissented.
The judgment followed unpaid work by British lawyers on behalf of prisoners on death row in the Caribbean. The appeal was brought by Balkissoon Roodal, who had been on death row since July 1999 when he was convicted of shooting a man in an argument over the theft of marijuana plants and sentenced to hang.
In February 2000 his appeal was dismissed by the Trinidad appeal court.
The judgment meant that death will become the maximum penalty for murder, to be imposed only for the most serious killings, rather than as a mandatory penalty.
Saul Lehrfreund, a human rights lawyer at the London solicitors Simons Muirhead & Burton, who represented Mr Roodal, said: "The ramifications and consequences of the Privy Council's ruling are huge. The cases of at least 80 men and four women on death row in Trinidad will now have to be reviewed."
He went on: "The implications for future murder trials will be the introduction of a completely new set of procedures restricting the imposition of the death penalty in the first instance.
"It will also have significant implications in Jamaica, the Bahamas and Barbados, where the constitutionality of the mandatory death penalty will have to be decided, affecting at least 200 men and women on death row. "
Lord Steyn said the case raised "profoundly important questions about the application of the death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago and the working of the constitution".
He said that the law regarding murder in Trinidad and Tobago was based on English common law. Murder did not require an intent to kill but only an intent to cause really serious bodily injury.
Statistics showed only a minority of murderers were convicted on the basis of an intent to kill. Yet the mandatory death penalty treated all murders in the same way.