government: costitutional parliamentary democracy

state of civil and political rights: Free

constitution: 6 August 1962

legal system: based on English common law

legislative system: bicameral Parliament consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives

judicial system: Supreme Court (judges appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister); Court of Appeal

religion: Protestant majority

death row: 8 (Afp, 19/12/2008)

year of last executions: 0-0-0

death sentences: 2

executions: 0

situation:
On the issue of capital punishment, the Jamaica Constitution states, "No person shall intentionally be deprived of his life save in execution of a sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been convicted".
Murder is a capital crime, except for pregnant women, persons over 70 years of age and those who committed crimes when under eighteen years old.
The last hanging in Jamaica took place in 1988. Nathan Foster was executed at the St Catherine Adult Correctional Facility on February 18.
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.
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.
The UK Privy Council struck down the mandatory death penalty for murder in Jamaica on July 7, 2004, winning a reprieve for more than 60 prisoners on death row. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council found that the 1992 Offences Against the Person Act, which introduced the mandatory death sentence for capital murder was inconsistent with section 17(1) of Jamaica’s constitution. According to the Law Lords, any death sentence passed since the Act was introduced in 1992 must be held to be illegal. This meant that all those condemned to death following that date had to have their case returned to the Supreme Court for sentencing.
Jamaica has a keen interest in removing the Privy Council and is one of the main proponents of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), which was inaugurated in Trinidad on April 16, 2005. In 2001, it was one of the 11 state parties to an agreement to set up this court to replace the Privy Council as the final court of appeal for the region. By November 2004, it was also one of only six countries that had decided to switch to the CCJ. However, the legislative process by which this decision was taken was challenged before the Privy Council by the opposition Jamaica Labour Party and three civil society groups - the Jamaican Bar Association, Jamaicans For Justice, and the Independent Jamaican Council for Human Rights – in December 2004. The four groups asked the Privy Council to rule on the constitutionality of the legislation granting the CCJ the same powers as the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, and jurisdiction over all matters within the jurisdiction of those Courts, passed in November 2004 by the vote of a simple majority in Parliament.
Jamaica must now await the decision of the Privy Council before it can go ahead with its plans to remove it in favour of the CCJ. The new Court is due to start operating in March 2005, but the legal challenge to Jamaica’s adherence and the failure of Trinidad and Tobago, the region’s other biggest country along with Jamaica, to pass the necessary constitutional amendments, are yet another obstacle to its problematic establishment. Caribbean countries view the CCJ as the means to throw off the last vestiges of colonialism, but human rights groups have warned that the Court may pave the way for governments to resume executions.
On December 18, 2008 Jamaica voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.