Capital punishment in the Isle of Man


There is a long history of capital punishment in the Isle of Man. Until the 17th century, many convicted prisoners were executed at Hango Hill.
Capital punishment in the Isle of Man was formally abolished in 1993. The Isle of Man is a British Crown Dependency, but not part of the United Kingdom.
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 before that. Capital punishment was not abolished by Tynwald until 1993. Many people were sentenced to death on the Isle of Man between 1873 and 1992.
The last person to be sentenced to death on the Isle of Man 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. Following sentencing, Teare engaged a new lawyer, Louise Byrne, who immediately took the case to the appeal court, where the conviction was quashed. A retrial was ordered, and 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. He entered the history books as the last person in the British Isles to be sentenced to death and the first in the Isle of Man to be sentenced to life imprisonment. Corinne's brother was in court as Teare, head bowed, was sentenced to a minimum of twelve years' imprisonment. He was sent to HMP Wakefield in Yorkshire.

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