I think the government should re-institute hanging due to the fact the there is too much murder .I don't know why they stop it in the first place anyway.Saying it is inhumane stupid. If you commit the crime especially murder you should be hang for taking some else life. Its on the books .The gov't should move forward in re-insitituting hanging even if they just do one for now to let the people know that they are serious. It will teach others a lesson and example to others. one scarfice to scare others

I think the government should re-institute hanging due to the fact the there is too much murder .I don't know why they stop it in the first place anyway.Saying it is inhumane stupid. If you commit the crime especially murder you should be hang for taking some else life. Its on the books .The gov't should move forward in re-insitituting hanging even if they just do one for now to let the people know that they are serious. It will teach others a lesson and example to others. one scarfice to scare others
this is where you are totally, totally wrong. HANGING DOES NOT DETER. its useless if thats the effect you envisage. moreover, in a jurisdiction where a 'trial' is not always 'fair', the last thing we should be doing is executing people! the amount of cases tainted with witness tampering, gettin off who you know, and 'settin people up'...please absolutely not! the state should not have the discretion to determine who lives and who dies. sorry. not in any circumstance.

Moon-Angel, you couldn't be more right. In a society where any trial you receive is probably not going to be fair, it would be far from rational or just to dish out such a severe penalty lightly. Don't get me wrong, I am all for the death penalty because of the retribute benefits of it. But in a system such as ours, where the proceedings and evidence is most likely tampered with, I wouldn't wish that type of punishment on anyone. The likelihood that an innocent person is being sent to the gallows is far too high.

There is some sensibility in rejecting the death penalty, but we must remember that we are not dealing with sensible people here. We are talking about criminals.

Many of us who rationalize that the death penalty is inhumane, or calculate the risk of someone innocent being hung, have a different mindset than the average criminal. Right now these guys and gals have no qualms about taking another person’s life. To them, life has no real meaning. One of the major problems with modern day society is that we have intellectuals who give emotional speeches on the value of human life, while the criminal in jail doesn’t give two-cents about life’s value and would just as easily kill the intellectual who is defending them. Some of you who are rejecting the death penalty do not have a clue of the type of people we now have living among us. Some criminals in this country will kill you as easily as they would cuss you. Their presence on this earth is not needed.

I say hang ‘em high and also bring back the cat-o’-nine tails for the younger set who wish to act out and carry on bad.


I guarantee that after the second hanging and a few public beatings, violent crime would drop significantly. Our politicians, who want to suck up to their constituents by rejecting hangings and the “cat”, all have bodyguards and high-tech security systems. They do not think about being robbed or killed by some money-hungry, foolish individual, who knows that they are only going to get a slap on the wrist.

Our lawmakers need to make the necessary changes NOW. This is a small country and the police already know who most of the troublemakers are. The chance of an innocent person being hung for a crime is less likely than in larger nations. Discipline isn’t being enforced in local households, so it is up to the public system to protect its citizens and get rid of the scourge of violence in our society. The crystal-clear message is that if you live violently, you will yourself become a victim of violence. Kill, and you will be killed. Even the simplest criminal can understand this.

Hang ‘em high and watch the crime rate drop.

Capital punishment was abolished in Canada way back in 1962, so we don't execute those who are convicted of murder. Even our "life sentence " is only 25 years long. Having said that, consider this set of facts...........
Donald Marshall was convicted of first degree murder, and served 23 years of his 25 year sentence. If we still had capital punisment, he would have been dead. His conviction was over-turned by the high court, because another man did the crime, and this was proven 100 percent by DNA evidence in 1999.
No country should have capital punishment, as the chances of killing an innocent person are too high. Continuing to have it means the country is too immature to see the folly of it's ways, and yes I do include the USA in that group.
To the young woman who started this thread...............You need to think this thru all the way to the logical conclusion, and examine your own reasons for being so blood thirsty.
Jim Bunting. Toronto.

There is some sensibility in rejecting the death penalty, but we must remember that we are not dealing with sensible people here. We are talking about criminals.

Many of us who rationalize that the death penalty is inhumane, or calculate the risk of someone innocent being hung, have a different mindset than the average criminal. Right now these guys and gals have no qualms about taking another person’s life. To them, life has no real meaning. One of the major problems with modern day society is that we have intellectuals who give emotional speeches on the value of human life, while the criminal in jail doesn’t give two-cents about life’s value and would just as easily kill the intellectual who is defending them. Some of you who are rejecting the death penalty do not have a clue of the type of people we now have living among us. Some criminals in this country will kill you as easily as they would cuss you. Their presence on this earth is not needed.

I say hang ‘em high and also bring back the cat-o’-nine tails for the younger set who wish to act out and carry on bad.


I guarantee that after the second hanging and a few public beatings, violent crime would drop significantly. Our politicians, who want to suck up to their constituents by rejecting hangings and the “cat”, all have bodyguards and high-tech security systems. They do not think about being robbed or killed by some money-hungry, foolish individual, who knows that they are only going to get a slap on the wrist.

Our lawmakers need to make the necessary changes NOW. This is a small country and the police already know who most of the troublemakers are. The chance of an innocent person being hung for a crime is less likely than in larger nations. Discipline isn’t being enforced in local households, so it is up to the public system to protect its citizens and get rid of the scourge of violence in our society. The crystal-clear message is that if you live violently, you will yourself become a victim of violence. Kill, and you will be killed. Even the simplest criminal can understand this.

Hang ‘em high and watch the crime rate drop.

My first thought is to agree with you, Hang ‘em high! But as I think about it I am not sure that our Justice system is fool proof. Nothing can be 100% fool proof but when you are going to take a human life you must get as close to it as possible. Mistakes can happen. I have heard of men on Death Row, being found guilty and waiting death, in the US being found innocent of murder due to DNA tests that were never given in the first place. If mistakes can happen there they can happen here. Once a life is taken all the DNA tests in the world can't bring them back.

Hang the guilty, but be sure they are guilty and not just a victim of a bad defense, a stupid jury and poor police work.

Jim and CG,

This is not the US or Canada. Those are first-world nations with much larger populations. Take a look at the most recent killings in Bahamian news, all of the perpetrators were caught without any doubt as to their identity. This is a small nation, not a nation of millions. Usually when something really bad happens, everyone knows exactly "whodunit"!

Take for example the recent brutal killing of a woman softball player (Moxey) by her jealous boyfriend. He beat her so badly that he dislocated her skull from her spine. He then had the audacity to take her to the hospital. Might I add that she was the one who got him released early from prison for the murder of his ex-wife's lover (through our judicial board of "mercy", can you believe it?)

The example above is the type of case that I speak of. Clear cut, violent criminals where there is no doubt of their inability to fit into this society. It would be a waste of taxpayer's money to keep persons like that alive. Hang 'em!

He should be the first to be made an example of. This is a third-world nation with no room for first-world rationale or sympathy. It was organizations from the US and the UK who begged us to change our capital punishment laws, but how can they compare us to their more advanced societies? Caribbean violence is perpetrated by an entirely different animal. The message of prevention has to be simpler, and far more barbaric to be effective, since citizens of a developing nation are not socialized in the same manner as those of a first world nation. This is REALITY, not fiction. In developing nations there is a socialization process that we must go through. First-world nations expect us to skip over these stages of development, for our own good, but it only proves to be detrimental to our societies.They want us to be "civilized" like they are, forgetting the many years of their own violent history that they had to go through and learn exactly what worked for them. We cannot expect completely different cultures to have a one-size-fits-all approach.

Strategies that work in first-world nations are supplemented also by social programs and rehabilitative measures that are the best in the world. We do not have such luxuries. The minute we put even a small-time criminal in our hellhole of a prison, there is little doubt that they are coming out the same way, if not worse than they went in.

Outside opinions noted, but no one can claim to know our people better than our own. If we attempt to adopt some first-world rehabilitative approach to "change" some of our criminals, they no doubt will laugh at it in scorn.

I'll say it again - Hang em high! It might sound barbaric to those outside this nation, who do not see the uncaring, unfeeling looks in the eyes of some of our more violent youth, but it needs to be done.

Hello to all,
First what legal system in any country is fair or free of issues, thus the argument that our legal system is not fair or probmatic holds no water. Who is innocent, no one is, as if we live in a guiltless world where the lie of innocent until proven guilty is a reality. Wake up folks it is not!
The 'law' in our society says that society has the right, not the government as it this is some separate uncontrolled entity, we put the people put the people in power and have allowed them in fact demand of them to manage our affairs. So we say death as a punishment to those persons who willingly with 'malice afore thought' take a life should be put to death. we cannot equate the enforcement of the death penalty with the intentional killing of our brothers and sisters because they have a car or the female did not want 'free up', how can we compare this. Likewise when in self defense a woman kills a man who is trying to rape her or kill her children, does not law and society praise her efforts, or when the police kill someone trying to kill you.
There is obviously some misunderstandings and misconceptions about taking life.
I agree capital punishment is not a deterrent it was never intended to be that, it is punishment. If the we punish the murder as outlined in our law and persons are deterred from committing killings in the future, is not relevant to the argument at hand. This after affect in fact cannot even be measured or proven, as if the the intended / potential murder will say he was going to kill physically another person but changed his mind. Have seen no evidence to support deterrence because of capital punishment.
In any event as mentioned at the beginning if we are waiting for a perfect society, laws, people before we act then we will not move forward.

Hello to all,
First what legal system in any country is fair or free of issues, thus the argument that our legal system is not fair or probmatic holds no water. Who is innocent, no one is, as if we live in a guiltless world where the lie of innocent until proven guilty is a reality. Wake up folks it is not!
The 'law' in our society says that society has the right, not the government as it this is some separate uncontrolled entity, we put the people put the people in power and have allowed them in fact demand of them to manage our affairs. So we say death as a punishment to those persons who willingly with 'malice afore thought' take a life should be put to death. we cannot equate the enforcement of the death penalty with the intentional killing of our brothers and sisters because they have a car or the female did not want 'free up', how can we compare this. Likewise when in self defense a woman kills a man who is trying to rape her or kill her children, does not law and society praise her efforts, or when the police kill someone trying to kill you.
There is obviously some misunderstandings and misconceptions about taking life.
I agree capital punishment is not a deterrent it was never intended to be that, it is punishment. If the we punish the murder as outlined in our law and persons are deterred from committing killings in the future, is not relevant to the argument at hand. This after affect in fact cannot even be measured or proven, as if the the intended / potential murder will say he was going to kill physically another person but changed his mind. Have seen no evidence to support deterrence because of capital punishment.
In any event as mentioned at the beginning if we are waiting for a perfect society, laws, people before we act then we will not move forward.

Yet another person applying first-world philosophy and rationale to a developing third-world nation. :cool:

That's the problem with this world in general. We have those who have gained some knowledge and experience from a first-world nation and automatically expect those who have never gone through such experiences to understand and change accordingly.

Refusal to implement capital punishment in this society will be much to our detriment. What may not work, or be acceptable in a first-world society, will indeed work in this nation. Believe it.

Jim and CG,

This is not the US or Canada. Those are first-world nations with much larger populations. Take a look at the most recent killings in Bahamian news, all of the perpetrators were caught without any doubt as to their identity. This is a small nation, not a nation of millions. Usually when something really bad happens, everyone knows exactly "whodunit"!

Take for example the recent brutal killing of a woman softball player (Moxey) by her jealous boyfriend. He beat her so badly that he dislocated her skull from her spine. He then had the audacity to take her to the hospital. Might I add that she was the one who got him released early from prison for the murder of his ex-wife's lover (through our judicial board of "mercy", can you believe it?)

The example above is the type of case that I speak of. Clear cut, violent criminals where there is no doubt of their inability to fit into this society. It would be a waste of taxpayer's money to keep persons like that alive. Hang 'em!

He should be the first to be made an example of. This is a third-world nation with no room for first-world rationale or sympathy. It was organizations from the US and the UK who begged us to change our capital punishment laws, but how can they compare us to their more advanced societies? Caribbean violence is perpetrated by an entirely different animal. The message of prevention has to be simpler, and far more barbaric to be effective, since citizens of a developing nation are not socialized in the same manner as those of a first world nation. This is REALITY, not fiction. In developing nations there is a socialization process that we must go through. First-world nations expect us to skip over these stages of development, for our own good, but it only proves to be detrimental to our societies.They want us to be "civilized" like they are, forgetting the many years of their own violent history that they had to go through and learn exactly what worked for them. We cannot expect completely different cultures to have a one-size-fits-all approach.

Strategies that work in first-world nations are supplemented also by social programs and rehabilitative measures that are the best in the world. We do not have such luxuries. The minute we put even a small-time criminal in our hellhole of a prison, there is little doubt that they are coming out the same way, if not worse than they went in.

Outside opinions noted, but no one can claim to know our people better than our own. If we attempt to adopt some first-world rehabilitative approach to "change" some of our criminals, they no doubt will laugh at it in scorn.

I'll say it again - Hang em high! It might sound barbaric to those outside this nation, who do not see the uncaring, unfeeling looks in the eyes of some of our more violent youth, but it needs to be done.

I see your point, I really do - it just worries me that an innocent man might be hung.

cat o nines, yes ... capital punishment NO. makes no sense, given the amount of mistakes we regularly make.

Point taken Yorick, and to some extent, I understand where you are coming from. However, resuming capital punishment is useless if it has already been proven that it:
1. will NOT stop the murderous mayhem in nassau and;
2. has a high possibilty of going WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!

As you stated on your comments, we lag behind developed countries when it comes to this issue, and really and truly, as I see it, this is more than enough reason for us to steer clear of the death penalty! IT CANNOT BE REVERSED. As far as I know (and I stand to be corrected), we dont even HAVE facilities for DNA testing in Bahamas! Samples must be sent abroad for results! yes, we are quite 'backward' in this regard - as you say, we are 'third world'. it then follows that we should not even consider such absolute means of 'eliminating the problem'!

moreover, you say that developed nations are not aware of the level of violence we face, and that we 'breed a different type of animal'...well even this is arguable. violent crime is also on the rise in the UK, US and Europe. ok, it might for different reasons, but listen, dont say these countries dont breed their own violent beasts because they do! God knows the english have it in their blood! *smile*

Finally consider this: EU countries, Australia and Canada do not have the death penalty...yet the have low murder rates ( and some of these countries...VERY low). Its not because they are 'more civilised than us'. Its because they have done/are doing whats necessary to reduce violent crime figures and murder. I put it down to education. Then look at us. the US. Jamaica. Trinidad. We have retained this mentality that killing criminals will solve the problem. Yet look at our crime rates! The main issue here should not be lifting the moratorium on capital punishment. The issue should be trying to find out WHAT IT IS that has poisoned our society to the extent that we dont give a damn about another human life. fix that problem and you wont need the death penatly!

... As far as I know (and I stand to be corrected), we dont even HAVE facilities for DNA testing in Bahamas! Samples must be sent abroad for results!
Yes we do and no we don't. The Punch 31 Oct. had a headline "Cop cash crisis: Police can't pay for DNA tests." So no DNA tests are being done - if you believe the Punch! :cop:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur&int=-1

of course the statistics take many different elements into account. its inescapable though! the top 10 countries with the highest murder rate in the world ALL have the death penalty. says alot.

CG: the story in the punch...cannot afford to pay for DNA tests doesnt necessarily mean they have the facilities in Nassau! it could mean they cant afford the costs of sending it abroad! but then again, i havent read the article (or the punch in years :( )

I suggest that all of you who are against the death penalty come out of your nice homes and locations and hang out on the blocks for a few weeks.

Talk to some of these guys and gals and you will find out that the only thing they fear is dying. If they know that all they are gonna get is a "vacation" in Fox Hill, where they will eventually come out with a even better "bad" reputation, they will continue to shoot, stab and kill others without remorse.

Forget studies by other countries! Get to know your own criminal element. To paraphrase the common opinion, they “don’t give a f_ck" about any life except their own. Most of them are too far gone for any hope of rehabilitation.

If the guys who recently murdered their girlfriends are not handed down death sentences, the rising trend of fatal domestic violence will continue in this country for many years to come. This is only one category of violent crime in this country.

Ya'll need to come down from ya'll ivory towers and get back to reality. Feel the pulse of the common people.

Remember how Bahamian kids were used to getting a whooping from almost anyone in the community who saw them doing wrong? Back then we kids had manners and respect. We knew that our backsides would get tanned if we didn't behave. Then some ignorant, well-meaning, intellect started telling Bahamian parents that we shouldn't whup our kids. The result: Nowadays kids feel quite comfortable cussing and even fighting their own parents! A "time out" might work for Susan and Tom, but it definitely is not gonna work for Sheniqua or Perry.

You all know exactly what I'm talking about. Don’t think that since you have a bit of "exposure" to the good life that the strategies that we had from the past don’t work. And for those of you who have never set foot in a ghetto, I rest my case. We have a different culture. Face it. Stop worrying about "innocents" being hung because obviously that sentence cannot be handed down without overwhelming evidence. We have four or five major killings in recent months where the perpetrator(s) is (are) absolutely guilty without a doubt. These are the persons who need to face the gallows. Capital punishment needs to be brought back right away. :hammer: