The Isle of Man formally abolished capital punishment in 1993,. The Isle of Man is a British Crown Dependency, but not part of the United Kingdom (which had effectively abolished capital punishment in 1965).
The last person to be actually hanged on the Isle of Man was John Kewish, at Castletown in 1872. No execution had taken place on the island during the three decades prior to this. Capital punishment was not abolished by Tynwald (the island's parliament) until 1993. Many people were sentenced to death (for murder and various other crimes) on the Isle of Man between 1873 and 1992.
The last person to be sentenced to death on the Isle of Man (and anywhere in the British Isles) was Anthony Robin Denys Teare, at the Court of General Gaol Delivery in Douglas, in 1992. The case was heard before the Second Deemster of the Isle of Man, Henry Callow. Deemster Callow thus became the last judge in the British Isles to pass a death sentence (but did not wear a black cap whilst doing so as often thought as this was not part of Manx tradition).. Following sentence Teare engaged a new lawyer Miss Louise Byrne who immediately took the case to the appeal court where the conviction was quashed. A retrial was ordered. A search for new evidence was made. At the second trial Teare was represented by Peter Thornton QC an English counsel. William Kelly a prison healthcare officer at the Isle of Man Prison gave evidence that Teare had told him on a number of occasions of how he had murdered the victim Corinne Bentley. It was on his evidence alone that Teare was convicted of murder for the second time and entered the history books as the last man in the British Isles to be sentenced to death and the first in the Isle of Man to be sentenced to life imprisonment (all previous life sentences had been commuted from death sentences). Corinne's brother was in court as Teare, head bowed, received a minimum of twelve years imprisonment. He was sent to HMP Wakefield in Yorkshire.
Famous quotes containing the words capital punishment, capital, punishment, isle and/or man:
“We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The capital is become an overgrown monster; which like a dropsical head, will in time leave the body and extremities without nourishment and support.”
—Tobias Smollett (1721–1771)
“Garth, marriage is punishment for shoplifting, in some countries.”
—Mike Myers (b. 1964)
“It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands. Behind every man’s busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Nor does the man sitting by the hearth beneath his roof better escape his fated doom.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)