Britain pressures Antigua on death penalty

ST. JOHNS, Antigua and Barbuda, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- The British government reportedly asked Antigua to spare anyone convicted of killing a honeymooning doctor as a condition of assisting the investigation.

The Sunday Telegraph, citing a senior source in Antigua, said Britain initially asked Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer for a written promise. Spencer had asked Britain for help from murder squad detectives from the Metropolitan Police, known popularly as Scotland Yard.

Catherine and Benjamin Mullany were shot by intruders in what appears to be a bungled burglary of their honeymoon cottage. Catherine Mullany, a doctor, was killed, and her husband remains in a coma.

The Antiguan interior minister told the Foreign Office the government could not make any promises about sentencing because that is in the hands of an independent judiciary.

Britain permanently abolished the death penalty for murder in 1969 and has not carried out an execution since 1964. Antigua retains the death penalty, but no one has been executed since 2000 when the country adopted a rule that inmates are automatically reprieved if not executed within five years.