St. Kitts & Nevis

Prominent SKN Attorneys Call For End To The “Death Penalty”

The Abolition of the Death Penalty in St. Kitts and Nevis, and the wider Caribbean region, was the topic on WINN FM’s radio program “Voices” on Thursday, October 22, 2020, where Mrs. Angelina Gracy Sookoo-Bobb and Mr. Chesley Hamilton, Attorneys at Law, weighed in on the very sensitive topic.

Mrs. Sookoo-Bobb, a skilled attorney in Human Rights Advocacy Litigation, who described the death penalty as something that has legal, political, economic, and religious views on the far divide said “the death penalty is not only archaic but it is something that should be abolished. It is something that, while our colonial masters handed down to us in our constitution, they have abolished it a long time ago, and they condemn us for maintaining the death penalty. We have it on our books, we don’t necessarily enforce it, which is a good thing, but the point is, is that it is there and in the constitution of St. Kitts and Nevis, once you are being tried for the crimes of murder or treason, the death penalty on the books suggests that it is mandatory”.

Sookoo-Bobb is Saint Kitts and Nevis’ Country Representative, in a pro bono capacity, for the three-year (2018 to 2021) ‘Building a platform for abolition: Strengthening the Anti-Death Penalty Movement in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean” project funded by the European Union.