R v Hughes

For the Canadian "right to food" trial, see R v Hughes (Canada).

Arms of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council

R v Hughes, Reyes v R and Fox v R were a trilogy of closely related cases considered by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), with the appeals heard together and the decisions released simultaneously on the 11 March 2002. ^{[1] [2]} The cases dealt with the constitutionality of the capital punishment in the Commonwealth Caribbean countries of Saint Lucia, Belize and Saint Kitts and Nevis respectively. ^[1]

Reyes concerned a man who, during a conflict over a fence, shot his neighbour and the neighbour's wife, then unsuccessfully attempted suicide. ^[2] Fox involved British bodybuilder Bertil Fox, who in 1998 was convicted of the double murder of his former fiancée and her mother the previous year. ^[3]

In all three cases it was held that mandatory death penalty was contrary to prohibitions on inhuman punishment, and thus unconstitutional. ^[4]

However, this conclusion doesn't necessarily apply in all of the Caribbean Commonwealth as the 2004 cases JCPC of Boyce v R (Barbados) and Matthew v The State (Trinidad and Tobago) found for the constitutionality of the death penalty in those countries. ^[5]

References

Citations

1. Burnham, Margaret A. (1 October 2005). "Indigenous constitutionalism and the death penalty: The case of the Commonwealth Caribbean". International Journal of Constitutional Law. 3 (4): 582–616. doi: 10.1093/icon/moi041 . ISSN   1474-2659 . Retrieved 12 December 2024.
2. Roe, Thomas (2002). "Human Rights and the Mandatory Death Penalty in the Privy Council". The Cambridge Law Journal. 61 (3): 505–508. ISSN   0008-1973 . Retrieved 12 December 2024.
3. Merritt, Greg (10 December 2005). "A letter from Bertil: Bertil Fox is serving a life sentence for double murder on the island of St. Kitts. In this FLEX exclusive, he gives his version of what happened on that fateful day in 1997". Flex. 23 (10): 186 – via Gale Academic OneFile.
4. Harrington, Joanna (January 2004). "The Challenge to the Mandatory Death Penalty in the Commonwealth Caribbean". American Journal of International Law. 98 (1): 126–140. doi:10.2307/3139261. ISSN   0002-9300 . Retrieved 12 December 2024.
5. Hill, Sheridon M. (8 September 2018). "Untangling the Web: Rationalizing the Death Penalty Jurisprudence in the Caribbean". In Wallace, Wendell C. (ed.). The Death Penalty in the Caribbean: Perspectives from the Police. Washington, D.C.: Westphalia Press. pp. 49–101. ISBN   978-1-63391-724-8.