“We pray that others will take note that our island society is fed up with this heinous type of crime,” said the Rev. Simeon Hall, president of the Bahamas Christian Council, when two murderers went to the gallows in the island’s capital, Nassau, on Thursday, October 15th, 1998.

There had been international human rights opposition to the hangings amid growing concern over the use of the death penalty in the Caribbean. But the Rev. Hall added: “This is the only recourse for innocent people.”

The two condemned men were Trevor Fisher, 28, convicted in March 1994 of murder during a robbery, and Richard Woods, 51, sentenced in January 1995 for the murder of his girl friend who was also his niece, Pauline Johnson, two years earlier.

There has been one more execution on the island since then, in 2000, but the consensus is that, despite the feeling expressed by the Rev. Hall, there will be no more in the whole of the West Indies.