Puerto Rico

History of the Death Penalty

Spanish colonists brought the death penal­ty to Puerto Rico. The first record­ed exe­cu­tions in Puerto Rico took place in 1514, when four slaves were hanged for an upris­ing. From 1514 – 1929, 589 exe­cu­tions were car­ried out in Puerto Rico. (Source: Jalil Sued-Badillo, PhD., La Pena de Muerte en Puerto Rico: Retrospectiva históri­ca para una reflex­ión con­tem­poránea, Puerto Rico, 2000.)

Notable cases

The last exe­cu­tion in Puerto Rico was the hang­ing of Pascual Ramos in 1927 for the mur­der of his boss.

In 2005, an Appeal Court of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico held that it would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to extra­dite Juan Melendez Cruz to Pennsylvania if he faced a pos­si­ble death sen­tence. The court referred to the issue as one involv­ing the fun­da­men­tal right to life. In July 2003, Philadelphia District Attorney spokes­woman Cathie Abookire con­firmed that Melendez Cruz, a Puerto Rican native, could face the death penal­ty in Pennsylvania. Melendez Cruz’s attor­ney, Eileen Diaz, argued that extra­di­tion of her client under such cir­cum­stances was pro­hib­it­ed by the Puerto Rican constitution.

Milestones in abolition/​reinstatement

Puerto Rico abol­ished the death penal­ty in 1929, two years after its last execution.

In 1952, when Puerto Rico draft­ed and rat­i­fied its own con­sti­tu­tion, the Bill of Rights includ­ed the straight­for­ward decree ​“the death penal­ty shall not exist.”

Because of Puerto Rico’s sta­tus as a Commonwealth of the United States, it is sub­ject to some fed­er­al laws, and the U.S. has recent­ly sought the death penal­ty on fed­er­al charges in a num­ber of cas­es. However, no death sen­tences have resulted.

Other interesting facts

The first Inquisition court in the west­ern hemi­sphere was estab­lished in San Juan in 1519.

Resources

• Department of Corrections
• ACLU of Puerto Rico
• Puerto Rico Department of Justice
• Federal Public Defender, District of Puerto Rico
• Victims’ ser­vices