Minister of National Security Colonel Trevor MacMillan (left) addresses journalists at Tuesday's press conference at the ministry's office in Kingston while Permanent Secretary Major Richard Reese listens. (Photo: Michael Gordon)

THE hangman's noose is available for action if and when the State decides to order the execution of death row inmates, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Security, Major Richard Reese, has hinted.

Reese told the Observer Tuesday that the gallows at the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre is functioning properly, after being recently refurbished.

"The gallows is in perfect working order. It is always maintained and was refurbished before the [December] conscience vote [on retaining the death penalty]," he said after at a press conference called by security minister Colonel Trevor MacMillan at the ministry's Kingston offices.
The nation's lawmakers in the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament voted in December to retain the death penalty.

According to Reese, who headed the Department of Correctional Services up to late last year, the cells which house condemned convicts were also refurbished.

"We were not anticipating any decision, it was done in the line of duty. Once the necessary warrant is issued the department is always in a position to carry out that order," Reese said.

There are presently nine death row inmates awaiting execution.

The last person to be sentenced to death was 34-year-old Jeffrey Perry, a security guard who stabbed and slashed his three cousins - Shadice Williams, four; Dwayne Davidson, 15, and 13-year-old Suann Gordon, as they slept in the rustic district of Killancholy, St Mary in January 2005.

Perry, who witnesses say wept bitterly while helping to load the bodies of the children in vehicles at the crime scene, was sentenced earlier this month in the Supreme Court.
He joins Ian Gordon, Michael Asserope, Garfield Campbell, Marlon Johnson, Oneil Hamilton, Michael Allison, Peter Dougal and Junior Campbell, who were all handed the death sentence after being found guilty of heinous murders.

Convicts who are sentenced to death are housed at a special section of the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre.

Faced with an out-of-control crime rate which has averaged over 1,400 per year for the last three years, the majority of Jamaicans have constantly called on the State to resume executions despite objections from local and international human rights lobbyists.

A total of 146 men have been hanged between August 1962 and 1988 when the last executions took place.
Women are not sentenced to death in Jamaica.