Tag Archives: thomas reckley

1996: Thomas Reckley, the first in Bahamas in 12 years

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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..