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My name is R.E. Barnes, I'm with the Bahamas Human Rights Network. We're located in Nassau,
Bahamas. I'm also a member of Amnesty International and have worked on the death penalty issue
for about 25 years now. Unfortunately, it still exists in the Bahamas. The Bahamas is
one of the retentionist countries in the Caribbean region -- even though technically we're in
the Atlantic: we're part of the Greater Caribbean. We've worked on that trying to educate and
enlighten people about why the death penalty doesn't work and it's sometimes an uphill
struggle. Sometimes you find some support, but overall, it's something that still meets
a lot of obstacles, particularly in the Bahamas where people feel that it is a simple solution
to crime. - When you think of the Bahamas, you think
of a country that's very well connected to the rest of the world, in terms of tourism,
financial services -- not exactly your typical retentionist country that may be isolated
and attached to traditions and old rules. So what are the factors that can explain that
the death penalty is still there? We're part of the Commonwealth and so we inherited
a lot of our laws and ways of governance from the United Kingdom (Great Britain at the time),
and that made a difference in how we approach things. If you think that it's not that long
since the UK abolished the death penalty, in that sense we are behind, but so are a
lot of other countries. Particularly in the Caribbean region, there's been a great reluctance
to move away from this traditional form of punishment. The execution would be hanging.
We fortunately have not had a hanging in some time now, principally because of our connection
to the Commonwealth. Our Supreme Court, if you will, is the Privy Council which sits
in the UK. They have made two major rulings which have modified how executions occur in
the Commonwealth countries, and particularly in this case in the Bahamas. The Pratt and
Morgan ruling said that no one could be on death row for more than five years without
being executed, or it was cruel and unusual punishment. That stopped almost all of the
executions we've had because the legal process becomes very slow. And the second thing is
that our old laws stated that the death penalty was mandatory in all capital offences. The
Privy Council ruled that that was not the way the law should be interpreted and so in
the past few years, there's been a mollification of that and the courts are being more lenient
now in sentencing people to death. There's still one person on death row at this stage,
but the sentence is still there and it has not been abolished, and so we're working to
move towards total abolition. - What would you like people outside the Caribbean
to realize, and how would like them to react on this World Day in a way that could help
you make progress towards abolition? Outside pressure is constructive if done in
a positive way. I don't think anybody likes to be told what to do, but I think if we have
constructive solutions, proposals from around the world, just the general momentum of the
world moving away from the death penalty as the ultimate solution, then that tends to
mitigate the Bahamas and other countries towards moving away as well. So it can be as simple
as letters to, say, the Prime minister of the Bahamas saying "we'd really like you to
move away from the death penalty as a solution", to support to the Bahamas in moving in that
direction. Little subtle pushes can sometimes help.