Group Launches Against Death Penalty
A new advocacy group dedicated to defending Bermuda’s abolition of the death penalty and campaigning against capital punishment worldwide will officially launch this Friday in Hamilton.
A spokesperson said, “A new organization is being born on an island that already knows what the gallows cost.
“Bermudians Against the Death Penalty [BADP] will formally launch at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, July 24 at Wesley Community Church, 41 Church Street, Hamilton. The organization exists to keep Bermuda abolitionist…and to stand with the condemned in the United States and everywhere else the state still kills.
“The conference is being convened by The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood, the prominent American death penalty abolitionist who has stood in the execution chamber with twelve condemned people as their spiritual advisor and who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year, together with The Rev. Dr. Augustine Tanner-Ihm, senior minister of Wesley Community Church.
“Bermuda has not executed anyone since December 1977. Erskine “Buck” Burrows and Larry Tacklyn were hanged at Casemates Prison. Days of rioting followed. Buildings burned. A curfew was imposed, and British troops were flown in. Those two hangings are generally recorded as the last carried out under British rule anywhere in the world. Bermuda has lived with that ever since.
“In August 1990, Bermudians voted in a referendum to keep the death penalty. Seventy-nine percent voted to retain it. Nine years later, the Abolition of Capital and Corporal Punishment Act 1999 received assent on 23 December 1999, after a House debate that contemporary accounts describe as being decided by the narrowest possible margin. That is the ground abolition stands on here. BADP exists because a margin that thin is not a settlement…it is an assignment.”
“Abolition is never finished,” said Hood. “The gallows do not disappear. They wait. Bermuda put its rope down. Now Bermuda has to help the rest of us put ours down too.”
“I have worked with the Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood,” said Tanner-Ihm. “I have watched him walk into rooms built for killing and refuse to let the man on the gurney die alone. That is not activism to me. That is ministry. Bermuda stopped hanging people in 1977 and made it law in 1999. We did not do that so we could stop thinking about it. Wesley is opening its doors on Friday because a church that will not name an injustice by its name is not a church. It is a building.”
A spokesperson added, “BADP is an activist and advocacy organization. It will pursue three commitments.
“The organization will defend abolition in Bermudian law and fight every attempt to bring the death penalty back in a crisis.
“The organization will organize Bermudians into direct pressure on the governments that still kill, particularly in the United States. Delegations. Petitions. Letters to governors and attorneys general. Public campaigns tied to named people facing named execution dates.
“The organization will put bodies in the street. Vigils at the United States Consulate General on Middle Road in Devonshire on execution days. Statements to the press. Names read out loud until people stop being able to ignore them.
“The United States executed forty-seven people in 2025. That was the most in more than fifteen years. Florida alone carried out nineteen of them…forty percent of the national total and the highest in that state’s history. The killing has continued through 2026.
“Friday’s launch will include remarks from both conveners, the organization’s first campaign priorities, and details on how Bermudians can join the work.”
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