Back in November of 2016, the Belize Court of Appeal scrapped the automatic life sentences without parole for convicted murders. And Now the Caribbean of Justice has done away with the death penalty in Barbados.
The decision came as part of an appeal of 2 unrelated death penalty cases from that island nation. The cases both challenged the murder convictions for 2 men, and they were also challenging the constitutionality of the mandatory death sentence for murder in Barbados.
After hearing the appeal of two murder convictions, the Court has ruled that Barbados’s mandatory sentence of death is unconstitutional.
The CCJ held that section 11 of the Barbados constitution, which gives the right to protection of the law, was enforceable, and that the mandatory death penalty breached this right.
Barbados has already has already given undertakings to the CCJ and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to rectify the mandatory sentence.
These are the last judgements that the CCJ President, Justice Dennis Byron will deliver while as the head of the CCJ. He leaves office on next week Monday.
But while both appellants managed to get the death sentence against them quashed, they were not successful in getting the murder convictions overturned. They will remain convicted of murder, but they will be taken back before the Barbados Supreme Court for a re-sentencing, where the death penalty against both will be substituted with another sentence.
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