Jamaican MPs vote to keep death penalty

There are currently nine people on death row in Jamaica but there has not been an execution since 1988.

KINGSTON, Jamaica, November 26, 2008 – Parliamentarians in Jamaica have overwhelmingly voted to keep the death penalty. But the members of the Senate still have to have their say on the matter.

In a conscience vote yesterday, 34 of the 60 members of the parliament agreed to maintain capital punishment, while 15 voted against it. Ten MPs, including Opposition leader Portia Simpson-Miller, were absent and the Speaker of the House did not get a vote.

The MPs had been debating the issue for two weeks and the vote had been scheduled for last week, but Prime Minister Bruce Golding suspended it to give more time to consider the matter and also to have more parliamentarians present. At the time, 45 of them were in attendance, just four less than the number of those who voted yesterday.

“Provided that the position that the Lower House took today holds, then we are going to stand ready to carry out that penalty whenever any person on death row has exhausted his avenues of appeal,” Prime Minister Golding said after the vote, although noting that Senators must also have their say. At the same time, he said that if the Senate votes to abolish the death penalty, “a great deal of weight would have to be attached to what the 60 members of parliament said because those were the persons who were elected by the people”.

There are currently nine people on death row in Jamaica but there has not been an execution since 1988.

However, the increasing number of murders – over 1,200 so far this year – have prompted calls for the authorities to resume hangings.

Amnesty International and Jamaicans For Justice are among those organisations which have insisted that this will not deter crime.