"Throughout the Commonwealth Caribbean, various legal challenges have been brought to the imposition of the death penalty, the most recent series of which deals with the mandatory nature of the penalty's imposition for crimes of murder (or in some states, certain categories of murder). Efforts undertaken since the mid-1990s to challenge the legality of a mandatory death sentence finally paid off in 2002, when the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Privy Council), acting as the highest appellate court for all but one of the Commonwealth Caribbean states, held in a series of three cases that such a sentence was contrary to the prohibition on inhuman punishment and therefore unconstitutional." (author)
Vesey knew the horrors of slavery first hand. Since he had lived in St. Dominique as a youth, he followed the events there with particular interest. Men from the area and surrounding plantations would attack the city, take control of the guardhouse and block the bridges and roads, killing every white person in sight.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
10 p., In analyzing Jamaica's Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review, Amnesty International raises concerns about the new Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, a series of "anti-crime" bills, the death penalty, the restrictive definition of "rape" in the new Sexual Offences Act, legislation which criminalizes sexual acts in private between consenting male adults, and outstanding ratifications. The organization also describes concerns in relation to human rights violations by the police; violence against women and girls; attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons; children in custody; and violence in inner-city communities.
