Abstract
The stories of those who have been executed in the Bahamas are heretofore untold. In telling these stories and in linking them to the changing course of Bahamian history, the present research adds an important dimension to our understanding of Bahamian history and politics. The major theme of this effort is that the changing practice of the death penalty is much more than a consequence of changes in crime. The use of the death penalty parallels the changing interests of colonial rulers, the changing practice of slavery, and the changing role of the Bahamas in colonial and regional affairs. Four distinctive eras of death penalty practice can be identified: (1) the slave era, where executions and commutations were used liberally and with a clear racial patterning; (2) a long era of stable colonialism, a period of marginalization and few executions; (3) an era of unstable colonialism characterized by intensive and efficient use of the death penalty; and (4) the current independence era of high murder rates and equally high impediments to the use of executions.
Highlights
The Bahama Gazette of April 12-15, 1791, included a notice that: A Negro man named Emanuel, who has been for some time past, advertised runaway from Samuel Kemp, was taken up at sea near Hyburn Key, in a failing boat, belonging to the brig Eliza, Stuart, in the beginning of last week, and brought to town
The paper of April 26-29, 1791, notes that “A negro man found guilty of murder, was executed last Tuesday
He and the negro who was executed on Tuesday last week, are hung in chains on Hog Island, at the entrance of the harbour” (p. 3). These two executions, both of blacks and of men who were probably slaves, one never named and the other identified only as Emanuel, as anonymous in death as in life, are graphic public spectacles of racialized state power. They represent, as far as I can determine, the first executions in modern Bahamian history, the period that begins with the re-establishment of British colonial control in 1784
Summary
The Bahama Gazette of April 12-15, 1791, included a notice that:. A Negro man named Emanuel, who has been for some time past, advertised runaway from Samuel Kemp, was taken up at sea near Hyburn Key, in a failing boat, belonging to the brig Eliza, Stuart, in the beginning of last week, and brought to town. Even when the imposition of the death penalty is mandatory for capital convictions, as in The Bahamas, examining the “spaces between” the law–such as the decision to pursue or impose a capital conviction for an eligible crime, the use of commutations, and the length of time between crime, conviction, and execution–may reveal variations in public and political commitment to the death penalty Within this more critical perspective, research has focused both on the role of criminal sanctions, including the death penalty, as a means of protecting and reproducing classbased social relations (e.g., Garland, 1990) and on the role of such sanctions in maintaining a racial order against threats to that order (e.g., Blumer, 1958; Blalock, 1967). Research suggests that the relationship between punitive action and racial threat may be non-linear, increasing only to the point that a level of minority group power is reached that limits
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