Burning alive

Burning alive.  I had mentioned in the post on the death penalty in Anguilla that there was no evidence that any one had ever been executed in the island.  Now, I have been sent documents that prove otherwise.  It would be as well to share them with you.  The first is a record of a trial by the Council of Anguilla in 1758 of two runaway slaves known only as Pero and George.  The record reads:

Anguilla

At a meeting of His Majesty’s Council, being present, The Honourable Benjamin Gumbs, Esquire; John Hughes, Benjamin Roberts, Joseph Burnett, Esquires, Members of Council.

Whereas two negro men, namely, Pero and George, belonging to this island have been lately taken on board a Schooner of War belonging to the subjects of the King of France who had in a felonious and treasonable manner fled from this island to the French in time of war between the Crowns of England and France; and likewise endeavouring to pilot and did aid and assist the said subjects of the Crown of France to land on the said island Anguilla to distress the said English inhabitants of said island.

It is hereby ordered and decreed by this Court that the negro man called George be put to death immediately by burning of his body until it be dead and that the negro man called Pero be immediately put to death by hanging by the neck until he be dead.

Signed by command, Joseph Burnett, Clerk to the Council.

It would appear from this record that, some time before their execution in 1758, George and Pero had fled from Anguilla and enlisted on a French privateer, probably from St Martin, and whose victims would have included Anguillian sloops and schooners.  More grievously, they had allegedly acted as guides for a French raid on Anguilla, though there is no confirmation of such a raid between 1756 and 1758 in the historical records.  This trial took place during the time of the Seven Years War (1756-1763) between the British and the French.  As such, they had been found guilty of committing the very serious crime of treason. 

Pero must have been a slave of Sarah Hodge of Anguilla as there is also a copy of her letter to her son confirming that she consents to the execution.  The letter reads:

Tuesday night, 19^th September 1758

Dear son,

I received your note which does not a little surprise me, to think that Pero has been taken on board a French Privateer, his behaviour has been so extraordinary, that I resign him to the Governor and Council, to do as they think proper. I hope this may in some wise deter the other negros from the like attempts.

I am dear son, your loving mother, Sarah Hodge.

Death by burning alive has a long history as a method of execution in crimes such as treason, heresy, and witchcraft.  In 1184, the Roman Catholic Synod of Verona legislated that burning was to be the official punishment for heresy, as Church policy was against the spilling of blood.  It was also believed that the condemned would have no body to be resurrected in the Afterlife.  The decree was later reaffirmed by the Fourth Council of the Lateran.  Burning was also used by Protestants during the witch-hunts of Europe.  Edward Wightman, a Baptist from Burton-on-Trent, was the last person to be burnt at the stake for heresy in England in the market square of Lichfield, Staffordshire, on 11 April 1612.

In the United Kingdom, the traditional punishment for women found guilty of treason was to be burnt at the stake, where they did not need to be publicly displayed naked.  Men were hanged, drawn and quartered.  The penalty of burning was introduced into the Colonies during the eighteenth century.  The most famous use in the New World occurred in the New York slave revolt conspiracy of 1741.  A large group of slaves were accused of plotting to escape and to destroy their masters at the instigation of white abolitionists.  Some 35 people, including 4 whites, were found guilty and executed.  Most of them were hanged, but 13 slaves were burned alive at the stake.  The plot allegedly included mass arson, which may have influenced this choice of punishment.

Burning at the stake fell out of favour among governments in the late 18^th century when more 'humane' methods were introduced.  In 1789, Catherine Murphy, convicted of counterfeiting, was the last person to be burnt at the stake in England.  In 1790, Sir Benjamin Hammett, who had been involved in her trial, introduced a bill into Parliament to end the practice.  The Treason Act of 1790 which resulted gave ladies equal access to the halter, and was duly given royal assent by King George III.

From this we can deduce that the sentence of death by burning imposed on George by the Anguilla Council was a lawful form of capital punishment in cases of treason, the crime for which he had been convicted.  The Anguilla Council of the time had no jurisdiction to convict or to execute a free person of treason or any other felony.  Anguilla never had a writ of assize issued to hold trials of felonies and misdemeanours until after she was joined to St Kitts in 1825.  A free person would have had to have been deported to Antigua, the seat of the Governor in Chief of the Leeward Islands, to be tried for treason and executed if convicted, as had been done with Captain Birmingham and the three French spies in 1711.  Slaves however were another matter.  They were not considered as persons but were the chattel property of their owners, and were not protected by law.  They could as easily be killed by their owners as executed by the Council.  The result is that Pero was hanged by the neck until he was dead, and George was burned at the stake in Crocus Bay. 

In practice, prisoners sentenced to be burned were usually strangled at the stake before the fire was set.  This was not to spare the victim the pain of burning, but to save his executioners the pain of seeing his suffering.  We can hope that this favour was shown to George, though he had clearly been sentenced to be burned alive until he be dead.  Both executions would have been carried out in public for the purpose of discouraging similar conduct by any discontented and rebellious slave in the future.

Abolition

The British abolished the death penalty without our consent!  Some persons express themselves to be very bitter about the way that they perceive that the death penalty was abolished in the British Overseas Territories in the West Indies.  They say that it was an arbitrary exercise of power by the British Government over us.  They protest that it was a dictatorial step taken by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and which was contrary to the wishes of the people.  They say it was an imposition on us, which was made without our knowledge or consent. From what I have been told, it would appear that nothing could be further from the truth.

First, some background.  The British Government, it is true, is bound both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations and by the European Convention on Human Rights.  The Convention is a constitutional document binding all members of the European Union.  Under the Convention, it is illegal for a member government to execute any person for any offence.  The reason for this general aversion to the death penalty is buried in the psyche and subconscious of the Europeans.  They have had such a blood-soaked and murderous past, stretching over 3,000 years of written history, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of years before writing was invented, that they have developed an instinctive aversion to the death penalty.  It may seem curious to some of us, but they consider the death penalty barbarous and uncivilised.  They cannot help having this feeling.  It is now part of their DNA, so to say. 

The guilt the Europeans feel for their 10,000-year recent history of war; massacre; burnings of religious heretics at the stake; pogroms against the Jews; drownings of witches; hanging, drawing and quartering of rebels; keel-hauling of mutineers; death by exposure while hanging in irons for bandits; the euthanasia of mentally retarded children; the elimination of Gypsies and other "subnormals"; religious wars; tribal wars; national wars; ethnic cleansings; the Holocaust; war upon war; not to mention the thousands of innocent persons who have been wrongfully convicted of capital offences, and executed, only to be proven innocent after they have been executed, have induced such an instinctive revulsion at the death penalty, that the Europeans will not countenance in their midst any country that retains the death penalty.  Their partners in the European Union hold Britain responsible for any outrages against their conscience that take place in the British Overseas Territories by the application of the death penalty.  It is undoubtedly true that, during the decades of the 1970’s and the 1980’s, the British were under intense international pressure to force us in the Overseas Territories to get rid of hanging.

       The death penalty has always been popular in the Americas, including the West Indies.  It satisfies the very human need to implement the Biblical injunction of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”  During the decade of the 1980s, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office repeatedly pressured the governments of the Overseas Territories to abolish hanging.  They were tired of being harangued and abused by their European colleagues at international conferences on human rights.  The British Government met stiff resistance to their urgings that we abolish the death penalty.

       The West Indian governments of the Overseas Territories, though at first loath to give in to the pleadings of the British Government, eventually saw the point.  By the end of the decade they were expressing themselves no longer opposed to the abolition of the death penalty.  But, they did not want to be the ones to introduce the idea into the parliaments of the West Indies.  They knew that the suggestion of abolishing hanging would meet with universal opposition.  Their governments would become so unpopular that they would almost certainly be defeated at the next polls. 

A solution was worked out.  The Premiers and Chief Ministers of the British Overseas Territories in the West Indies, at one of their annual conferences in London, put the solution to the FCO.  The suggestion was made that it would be much cleaner, and cause many fewer problems for the local governments, if the British Government would do it for them.  So, the British were encouraged by our governments to pass the necessary Order in Council that abolished the death penalty.  As promised, none of our governments objected.  It was done quietly and peacefully.  Hardly anyone noticed.  The British need to have their name cleared of the charge of permitting state-sponsored killings in their Overseas Territories was satisfied.  The West Indian governments need to stay clear of any suggestion that they were soft on crime by proposing the abolition of hanging was met.  Everyone was happy. 

       And, so we can say that in Anguilla, the death penalty has been abolished since the year 1991.  The right to life is absolute.  Well, nearly absolute.

       It is still lawful for one of us to take the life of another in using reasonable force for the defence of person or property.  This is the defence of self-defence.  If a violent person is attempting to evade arrest, or to escape from prison, and he is shot in the process of effecting that arrest or preventing that escape, that would be a lawful killing.  In the unlikely event of a riot, insurrection, or mutiny, if a lawful order is given to fire on the rioters, any deaths will not be in breach of the constitutional protection of the right to life.  And, finally, in the event that Anguillians are involved in a lawful war, our soldiers firing on an enemy as a result of orders to do so, will not be in breach of the provision.  Killing in pursuance of a lawful war is no murder.

       But, generally, when it comes to the death penalty for murder, it is safe to say that it has been completely abolished in Anguilla.  The protection of the right to life in Anguilla is sacrosanct.

Hanging

Let us look at the first of our fundamental rights, ie, the right to life.  The protection of our right to life is enshrined in section 2(1) of the 1982 Constitution of Anguilla.  This reads:

2.(1) No person shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence under the law of Anguilla of which he has been convicted.

       The meaning of this is clear.  No law can be passed in Anguilla permitting someone to be executed, save in carrying out a sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence.  So, if the House of Assembly were to pass a law providing for mercy killing in Anguilla, that would be unconstitutional.  If we were to provide by law for a eugenics programme of terminating the life of all persons who have an IQ, or intelligence quotient, below a certain level, that would be unconstitutional. 

       In the statute books, you may still find the provision that the sentence for murder is death by hanging.  Such a sentence would indeed be a sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence, and apparently permissible.  However, the section of the Anguilla Constitution permitting executions by way of a sentence of a court has been impliedly amended by a subsequent statutory instrument.  The death penalty for murder was abolished in Anguilla, and all the British Overseas Territories, in the year 1991.  Section 3 of the Caribbean Territories (Abolition of the Death Penalty for Murder) Order, 1991, provides:

Abolition of the Death Penalty for Murder

3. Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law in force in the Territory, no person shall be sentenced to death by any court in the Territory for the crime of murder, and a person convicted of murder shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life.

       Since, for all intents and purposes, in Anguilla we only had the death penalty for murder it is now safe to say that the death penalty has been completely abolished.  Nobody can be hanged for murder in Anguilla since the year 1991, no matter how deserving we may think that person might be of such a retributive penalty.

Much as some of us may think otherwise, this is no great loss in practice.  My researches have not uncovered a single case of a person being executed in Anguilla for murder since the abolition of slavery in the year 1834.  I am told that many years ago one or two persons who committed murders in Anguilla were taken to St Kitts, tried there, and hanged there.  But, no one has been hanged in Anguilla in all the years of its recorded history, so far as I have been able to determine.