Locked up

Some more of the limits of our right to personal liberty:  In the last post, I began looking at our second fundamental right under our Constitution of Anguilla.  The fourth exception to this right to personal liberty occurs when we are locked up “in execution of the order of a court made in order to secure the fulfilment of any obligation imposed on him by law.”  This is another example of a person being able to be imprisoned for failing to carry out an order of a court compelling the person to do something that some law required him to do.  So, if the Planning Department orders me to pull down a house I started without planning permission, and if I refuse or neglect to pull it down, the Planning Department can get a court order compelling me to pull it down.  If I fail to carry out the order of the court to pull down the house, the court can order me imprisoned until I have it pulled down.

A fifth exception to the constitutional right to personal liberty occurs where a person is seized for the purpose of bringing him before a court in execution of the order of a court.  This happens when the court issues a bench warrant to the police to find a person and bring him before the court.  So, if I receive a Summons to appear in the Magistrate’s Court, and I go to work instead, I may find the police appearing at my work place with a bench warrant to pick me up and bring me to court.  I will not be allowed to complain if this happens.

The sixth exception is the familiar one which gives the police the power to arrest someone upon reasonable suspicion of his having committed or of being about to commit a criminal offence under the law of Anguilla.  Note that the power of arrest is not limited to police officers.  It says that a person can be deprived of his personal liberty, ie, arrested, upon reasonable suspicion of his having committed or of being about to commit a criminal offence under the law of Anguilla.  The question of wrongful arrest is a difficult, but interesting one.  I shall look at this problem in a little more detail in a separate programme.

The seventh exception applies to children who are adjudged to be so unmanageable that it is necessary to confine them for their education or welfare during the period that they are under eighteen years of age.  This can only be done with the consent of their parents or guardians.  This falls within the category of the parent, and the state acting in the place of the parent, making provision for the care and protection of the child.  It is not a form of punishment.

The eighth exception is for the purpose of preventing the spread of an infectious or contagious disease.   It is under this exception that quarantine laws can be justified.  If we are suspected of having contracted one of the listed dangerous and contagious infections, we can be ordered by the health authorities to be confined in a place of quarantine for the specified duration.

The ninth exception is the case of a person who is suspected to be of unsound mind, addicted to drugs or alcohol or a vagrant.  It exists for the purpose of his care and treatment and for the protection of the community.  It is this law that permits the Mental Health Act to provide for mental cases to be picked up and detained at a special ward at the Hospital while they are being observed and treated.

The tenth exception exists for the purpose of preventing the unlawful entry of a person into Anguilla, or for the purpose of effecting his expulsion, extradition or other lawful removal from Anguilla.  This section permits someone to be restricted while he or she is in Anguilla in the course of his extradition or removal from Anguilla.  So, if a visitor becomes a prohibited immigrant, he can be picked up and detained at the Police Station while they wait for a ferry to take him back to St Martin or wherever he came from.

The final exception mentioned in section 3 is in the case of a restriction that may be considered necessary in the execution of a lawful order requiring a person to remain within a specified area within Anguilla or prohibiting him from being within such an area or to such an extent as may be reasonably justifiable for the taking of proceedings against that person relating to the making of such order, or to such extent as may be reasonably justifiable for restraining that person during any visit that he is permitted to make to any part of Anguilla in which, in consequence of any other such order, his presence would otherwise be unlawful.  It is this exception that permits a judge or magistrate to order abusive spouses never again to be present within a certain radius of their victim, or risk going to gaol.  It would permit a foreigner to be allowed into Anguilla solely for the purpose of being conveyed to the Court to be dealt with there in relation to some offence with which he is charged.  
We're not yet finished. I have three more posts on this fundamental right.

Personal Liberty

The second of our fundamental rights enshrined in the 1982 Anguilla Constitution is the right to personal liberty.  That refers to our right not to be locked up in a police cell, or a prison, or a hospital ward, or in any other place of any description, without our consent, or unless some law permits it.

Section 3 of our Constitution provides:

Protection of right to personal liberty

3. (1) No person shall be deprived of his personal liberty save as may be authorised by law in any of the following cases, that is to say—

So, no government officer can order us, even under penalty of arrest, to go to any office building, or police station, or hospital, or health clinic, except there is a law giving them that power. 

As we can expect, there are various exceptions to this fundamental right to personal liberty.  They are all situations authorised by law.  Our House of Assembly has to pass a law that infringes our right to freedom.  No government can by mere executive decision or action take away this fundamental right.   

The first of these exceptions is in consequence of our "unfitness to plead to a criminal charge".  So, if I commit a crime, and come before the court, the court may be satisfied that my mental condition makes me unfit to stand trial.  Does that mean that I am set free to commit another crime?  No, the court can order me confined in some safe place prescribed under the Mental Health Act until the court is satisfied that I am fit to plead to the charge.  Then, when I am better, the court can proceed to try me and to impose such sentence as it considers fit.  But, note that it is the court that orders me deprived of my liberty, and the court does it under the power given to it by an Act.  I cannot be detained under this exception by a person who does not have the legal right to do so.

There is another more obvious way that a court can order me confined.  That is, "in execution of the sentence or order of a court".  This may be a court established in Anguilla or some other country, in respect of a criminal offence of which I have been convicted.   This exception is limited to where a court has sentenced me to a term of imprisonment.  Note that, under this exception, if the police find an escaped prisoner from St Maarten at large in Anguilla, they can arrest him.  The Anguilla court can order him confined even though he has not done anything against the law in Anguilla.  That is as it should be.  If a prisoner escaped from Anguilla and went to St Maarten, we would expect the police and the courts in St Maarten to respect the sentence of the court in Anguilla.  We would want the escaped prisoner confined until he could be brought back to Anguilla to continue serving his sentence.

The third exception is where a judge sentences a lawyer or some other person to serve a term of confinement for being in contempt of court.  It is lawful for us to be deprived of our personal liberty in execution of an order of the High Court or the Court of Appeal or such other court as may be prescribed by the Legislature on the grounds of our contempt of any such court or of another court or tribunal.  Note that the power to order a person who is in contempt of court is limited to the High Court and the Court of Appeal.  A Magistrate would only have the power to confine a person who is in contempt of the Magistrate's Court if a law passed by the Legislature gives that power.  And, no law in Anguilla does so.

A High Court has the widest power to commit a person in contempt of its order to imprisonment, providing the rules are followed.  If I say anything rude to the judge, she can hold a hearing and send me to prison, say, for a week.  A Magistrate, by comparison, has a very limited power to punish for contempt.  The normal way in which a Magistrate can imprison a person for contempt is where the Magistrate has ordered the person to pay a debt, or child support, and the debtor has refused to pay without a good reason.  Additionally, where the Magistrate has ordered someone to do something, or to stop doing something, and the person persists, the magistrate may imprison the offender for up to 10 days.  If someone is rude in the Magistrate's Court, the Magistrate may be able to fine the person, but he cannot commit him to a term of imprisonment in the same way a judge can.  I have known of exceptional cases where a person has been brought before the Judge of the High Court on a charge of contempt in a Magistrate's Court.  Only a High Court Judge can order a person to serve a term of imprisonment for behaving badly in a Magistrate's Court.

To be continued.

Unlawful death

The right to life is wider than the death penalty.  At about 8:00 am on the morning of 1 December 1987, a 22 year-old Indian man was taken into custody by the police in connection with an investigation into a theft.  He was taken to a police outpost near to his home in the State of Orissa in India.  His mother, Nilabati Behera, visited him that night with his supper, which he ate.  On the following day, he was found dead on a nearby railway track with multiple injuries.  He was still wearing a handcuff.  The mother wrote a letter to the Supreme Court complaining that she wanted justice for her son.  The Supreme Court treated her letter as a writ petition in the original jurisdiction of the court under the Constitution of India, and accepted it as a case filed.  The court treated her letter as initiating a claim for compensation for contravention of the fundamental right to life of her son guaranteed by the Constitution. 

The Supreme Court of India directed a District Judge in the State of Orissa to hold an inquiry into the facts and to report back.  The police claimed that the deceased had escaped from police custody and that his injuries were the result of his having been run over by a train.  The medical evidence from the doctor who conducted the post-mortem examination was that most of the injuries had been caused by a long and violent beating.  His body had, subsequent to his death, suffered further injuries from being dragged by a train after it had been placed on the train line.  The Judge conducting the inquiry reported back to the Supreme Court that according to the evidence that he had uncovered the deceased had died from multiple injuries inflicted on him while in police custody. 

The Supreme Court heard argument from the lawyers for the State.  It held that the State had breached the deceased's fundamental right to life.  The Court explained that the purpose of public law is not only to civilize public power, but also to assure citizens that they live under a legal system which aims to protect their interests and preserve their rights.  Therefore, it is the duty of the court to mould a relief by granting compensation in proceedings brought under the Constitution seeking enforcement or protection of fundamental rights.  It does so under the public law by way of penalising the wrongdoer and fixing the liability for the public wrong on the State which has failed in its public duty to protect the fundamental rights of the citizen. 

The judges of the Supreme Court sat down and worked out, based on the age of the son, what his loss of income to his family had been if he had lived to the usual age.  They awarded what was at the time a large sum of money by way of damages to be paid to the mother. 

As the Indian Supreme Court explained, the payment of compensation in such cases is not to be understood as damages, as it is generally understood in a civil action for damages under the private law.  It is to be understood as damages in the broader sense of providing relief by an order of making 'monetary amends' under the public law for the wrong done due to breach of public duty, of not protecting the fundamental rights of the citizen.  The compensation is in the nature of exemplary damages awarded against the wrong-doer for the breach of its public law duty.  It is independent of the rights available to the aggrieved party to claim compensation under the private law in an action based on tort, through a suit instituted in a court of competent jurisdiction, and/or the right to prosecute the offender under the penal law.  The Supreme Courts and the High Courts, are the protectors of the civil liberties of the citizen.  The court has not only the power and jurisdiction but also an obligation to grant relief in exercise of its jurisdiction under the Constitution and its duty to the victim or the heir of the victim whose fundamental rights are established to have been flagrantly infringed.  It does this by calling upon the State to repair the damage done by its officers to the fundamental rights of the citizen.  This, notwithstanding the right of the citizen to seek a remedy by way of a civil suit or criminal proceedings.

That was a powerful judgment.  It is worth remembering that it is a part of the law of Anguilla too.

Governance

We take a break from considering fundamental rights and the right to life.  Something urgent has come up that I need to consider.  Mike Gapes MP (photo left) and his Foreign Affairs Committee have just put out another report affecting us in the British Overseas Territories.  After having read it, I am concerned.  It would appear that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is refusing to accept responsibility for the decline of good government in the Turks and Caicos Islands.  They are holding up reform by refusing to fund the necessary prosecutions.  The inevitable result, I fear, will be the British Government’s international embarrassment. 

The FAC is about to be dissolved as Britain heads into general elections.  There will be a new Committee from about May 7.  Before being dissolved, the FAC has done us the favour of producing this Report.  It analyses and summarises where the Interim Government of the TCI is in investigating and prosecuting the crimes of the previous government and in putting in place mechanisms that will ensure that such a state of affairs as we have seen over the past 5 years does not easily happen again.

       The Report is not very long (read it here).  I urge you to read it for yourself.  The appendices, titled “Written Evidence”, provide startling new information to the effect that the FCO has not understood the extent to which it is responsible for the decline in governmental standards in our Territories.  The gnomes of Whitehall appear to have taken the view that it is the responsibility of Territories such as TCI and Anguilla to fund their own investigations, prosecutions, and reforms.  All those experts presenting evidence to the FAC, except those coming from within the FCO, were unanimously of a different view.  It is the responsibility of the British Government to produce the necessary funds.  If this is not done, the inevitable outcome of reductions in public service salaries and the laying off of surplus workers will be that the public will view the reforms as having come at the expense of income and jobs of the locals.  The risk is that the reforms will be rejected as having cost too much.  That is in addition to the point that the island budgets could never raise the necessary funds.

       As Special Prosecutor Helen Garlick reported, the budget for her prosecutorial team to the end of next year is ₤6.8 million.  At 4 to 1, that would be EC$27.2 million.  That is just the beginning, as the figure does not include the cost of any actual prosecutions.  We can assume that figure will double and triple once prosecutions begin.  This is an enormous cost for a small-island territory to bear.

       Helen Garlick, Special Prosecutor, TCI

        As the old maxim has it, a stitch in time saves nine.  If the FCO had only done its oversight job properly in the first place, this expense would not have had to be incurred. 

       Paragraph 14 is relevant to us in Anguilla.  It reads:

14. Although this Report deals specifically with issues relating to TCI, a number of concerns have been brought to our attention in relation to allegations of corruption and poor governance in other Overseas Territories—for example, in Anguilla.  We recommend that the Government should supply us with a memorandum setting out in detail what support is provided by the UK Government to each of the individual Territory governments to assist them in tackling corruption and maintaining standards of good governance.  In the event that it is not possible to supply this information to us before the dissolution of the present Parliament, we recommend that the Government should make it available to our successor Committee in the next Parliament when it begins its work.

       Those three sentences raise a spark of hope in our breasts that someone in Westminster understands the needs of these Overseas Territories for reform in our system of governance.  Whether the FCO will live up to its responsibilities is another matter.  Only time will tell, bearing in mind that the likelihood is that there will be a new government in place in the UK in a few short weeks.  New policies will surely sweep away the old ones.

       We have got to keep our focus on the need to reform our Constitution to put in place an entirely new regime of checks and balances designed to ensure that the risk of political and administrative abuse is minimised. 

       Anguillians have to be concerned that under any new UK government the FCO will continue to refuse to fund good governance programmes in the Overseas Territories and will wash their hands of us at the end of the day, leaving us to become yet another failed Caribbean banana-republic state.

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.