Death row reprieve

Privy Council: landmark ruling substitutes life for six prisoners

A landmark decision of the Privy Council last week means hundreds of warrants of execution issued in the Caribbean in recent years are invalid, City lawyers have claimed.

Six Jamaican men sentenced to death for murder had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment in a ruling described by human rights specialist Saul Lehrfreund as 'the most important decision of the Privy Council in nearly ten years'.

The judicial committee of the Privy Council ruled that prisoners on death row should be given access to all material put before the Jamaican mercy committee - the body which ultimately decides who should hang - and given the chance to put representations to it.

The Privy Council also ruled that it would be unlawful to execute prisoners without regard to the decisions of international bodies such as the UN Human Rights Committee and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.

This judgment overrules numerous previous decisions of the Privy Council, which is the final court of appeal for prisoners in the Commonwealth Caribbean, and gives fresh hope to hundreds of prisoners on death row in the Caribbean.

The six were represented by members of the panel of London law firms which act on a pro bono basis on such cases: Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Herbert Smith, Kingsley Napley, Simons Muirhead & Burton and SJ Berwin.

Mr Lehrfreund, a human rights specialist at Simons Muirhead, said: '[the judgment] goes some way towards ensuring that the law and practice in the Commonwealth Caribbean conforms with international human rights standards.'

Victoria MacCallum