October 19th, 2018
Headsman
On this date in 1976, American killer Michiah Shobek was hanged in the Bahamas.
Born James Michael Shoffner, Shobek was a Milwaukee handyman who murdered* three other Americans abroad in Nassau during a two-month period — people Shobek called “angels of Lucifer.”
* Two by stabbing, one by strangulation.
On this day..
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Bahamas,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Hanged,Murder,Racial and Ethnic Minorities
Tags: 1970s, 1976, michiah shobek, nassau, october 19
April 19th, 2014
Headsman
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. He has since been tried for stealing the boat, condemned, and sentenced to be hanged on Tuesday next.
-Bahama Gazette, April 12-15, 1791
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.
-Bahama Gazette, April 26-29, 1791
According to William Lofquist’s “Identifying the condemned: Reconstructing and analyzing the history of executions in The Bahamas,” The International Journal of Bahamian Studies, these appear to be the first documented judicial executions on the Bahamas since Great Britain re-established control of the archipelago in 1784. (The Bahamas were part of the territory contested in that war: Nassau was briefly occupied by American troops, and was in the hands of Spain when the fighting stopped. Spain transferred the island back to Britain in the postwar settling-up.)
On this day..
- 1800: William M'Ilnea, true to the cause - 2019
- 1246: Brandur Kolbeinsson, Age of the Sturlungs beheading - 2018
- 1374: Tile von Damm, Braunschweig mayor - 2017
- 1012: St. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury - 2016
- 1779: James Hackman, sandwich wrecker - 2015
- 1928: Charles Birger, bootlegger - 2013
- 1662: John Barkstead, Miles Corbet, and John Okey, renditioned regicides - 2012
- 1996: John Martin Scripps, British serial killer - 2011
- 1314: Tour de Nesle Affair adulterers - 2010
- 1945: Gen. Charles Delestraint - 2009
- 1995: Richard Snell - did he go out with a bang? - 2008
Entry Filed under: 18th Century,Bahamas,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Gibbeted,Hanged,History,Milestones,Occupation and Colonialism,Public Executions,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Slaves,Theft
Tags: 1790s, 1791, april 19, nassau
March 13th, 2013
Headsman
On this date in 1996, Thomas Reckley was hanged in the Bahamas for a 1989 Nassau drug murder.
This execution was noteworthy as the first in 12 years in the Bahamas.*
It was also notable as the first since the British Privy Council’s 1993 Pratt and Morgan ruling. That decision held that keeping a condemned prisoner awaiting the gallows for more than five years constituted “cruel and inhumane treatment” sufficient to invalidate the death sentence.
In an uncomfortable holdover from the Empire, the Privy Council was then and still remains today the court of last resort for Commonwealth countries in the region. Therefore, Pratt and Morgan had the effect of making death sentences extremely difficult to carry out: the Privy Council itself dilated appeals (or at least, this was what irritated tough-on-crime types said), and also asserted a human rights standard requiring expedited appeals. In 1994, Trinidad & Tobago squared the hemp circle by hanging Glenn Ashby six days before the deadline even though his last Privy Council appeal was still pending. (It was granted … but too late.)
Sentenced to death on November 7, 1990, Reckley was clearly past the five-year pole when the Bahamas decided to hang him. (He’d received five stays of execution in his time.) This execution appears to be the first in the Caribbean that would fail to meet the Pratt and Morgan test.
* The last previous was William Armbrister on April 10, 1984, capping a period in the 1970s and early 1980s when the Bahamas saw routine hangings every year or two.
On this day..
- 1889: Samuel Rylands, the first hanged at Shepton Mallet - 2019
- 1663: Alexander Kennedy, forger of false bonds and writts - 2018
- 1601: Henry Cuffe, mingled interest - 2017
- 1951: Ants Kaljurand, Estonian Forest Brother - 2016
- 1569: Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde, at the Battle of Jarnac - 2015
- 1493: Peter Dane, in the Sternberger Hostienschänderprozess - 2014
- 1956: Jesus Maria de Galindez - 2012
- 2005: A gay couple in Saudi Arabia - 2011
- 1985: Stephen Morin, serial killer convert - 2010
- 1858: Felice Orsini, Italian revolutionary - 2009
- D - 2009
- 1998: Bahram Khan, by his victim's brother - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Bahamas,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Drugs,Execution,Hanged,History,Milestones,Murder
Tags: 1990s, 1996, march 13, nassau, pratt and morgan, privy council, thomas reckley
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