The Death Penalty in the Commonwealth Caribbean: A Constitutional Conundrum

The constitutional conundrum facing Commonwealth Caribbean states on the issue of the death penalty is related to the disconnect between their existing laws, which make provision for it, and the post-independence application of the provisions of their Bills of Rights. The evolution of thinking on these subjects by a later generation of judges at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) from the 1990s onwards has overturned the existing law theory and replaced it with a human rights theory, both of which are to be found within the same post-independence constitutional texts. That evolution and conundrum are discussed in this chapter.