St Kitts and Nevis
We have been working in St Kitts and Nevis for more than two decades, where the death penalty is retained in law – though the country has not carried out an execution since 2008.
In 2026, we are mounting a direct challenge to the legality of the death penalty in St Kitts and Nevis, which, if successful, could lead to the punishment being ruled unconstitutional.
Having not carried out an execution since 2008, the United Nations categorises St Kitts and Nevis as abolitionist de facto. The entire Caribbean falls into this category. In the four decades since independence, St Kitts has executed three people. They had each been convicted of serious crimes but were killed before they managed to exhaust their rights of appeal. In the case of Charles LaPlace, the last execution in St Kitts and Nevis in 2008, his executioner reported to the press that Charles had spent the final eight hours of his life with his hands and feet tied, rendered incontinent with fear.
Individuals sentenced to death in St Kitts and Nevis can spend decades on death row, often in poor conditions and subject to immense uncertainty, leading to severe psychological distress.
We began working in St Kitts and Nevis in the early 2000s, as part of our efforts offering human rights training across the Commonwealth Caribbean.
That foundational work took us into the Magistrates Court and into prison facilities, and over the two decades since, we have delivered large-scale training seminars for psychiatrists and mental health professionals, building the local expertise needed to assess and advocate for individuals facing the most serious sentences.
Our legal representation work has been significant and had an enormous impact for individuals in the country. We represented Berthill Fox for over two decades, successfully challenging his mandatory death sentence before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in a landmark ruling, before going on to challenge his continued incarceration. He was ultimately released in 2022.
In 2023, we successfully appealed the excessive sentence of Evanson Mitcham, who had spent almost two decades on death row. He was released in 2025.
We also assisted the local legal team in the case of Nardis Maynard, whose conviction was overturned after nearly twenty years, following a finding that the trial court had ignored clear inconsistencies in the evidence against him. Nardis was released in 2024.
In 2025, the state notified our client Trevern Edwards that they would be pursuing a death sentence upon his conviction for murder. After many months of anguish and uncertainty, the prosecution then reversed this decision a matter of days before Trevern was due to be sentenced. This was based on political rather than legal factors: when withdrawing the application for the death penalty, the prosecution explained that it was because they were unwilling to damage diplomatic relationships and risk overseas development funding.
To challenge the inherent arbitrariness of the capital punishment regime in St Kitts and Nevis, we have initiated legal proceedings on Trevern Edwards’ behalf to contest the legality of the death penalty in St Kitts and Nevis. The challenge focusses on the country’s track record of a disregard for human rights in the application of the death penalty, the cruel and inhuman method of hanging, as well as the clear politicisation of individual cases, which should render the punishment unlawful under the constitution. The court is likely to rule on the constitutionality of the death penalty in 2026.