Jamaica is a British Independent Territory that retains...

Jamaica is a British Independent Territory that retains the death penalty, but for which the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is the final court of appeal. Murder is a capital crime, except for pregnant women and persons under eighteen. In 1998, Jamaica announced several times that it would withdraw from the Inter-American Court on Human Rights to speed up executions. The last hanging in Jamaica took place in 1988. Between 1988 and 1992, obstacles ranging from the inability to recruit a hangman to waiting on appeal decisions from the Privy Council resulted in a suspension of hanging. In 1993, the London-based Privy Council ruled in the case of Jamaicans Earl Pratt and Ivan Morgan, that five years on death row constituted unusual and inhumane punishment. It ordered their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, thus establishing a five-year limit for prisoners on death row.