John Kewish was the last person to be executed in the Isle of Man. His hanging in the summer of 1872 was for the murder of his elderly father. He was not, however, the last murderer to be sentenced to death by a Manx court. Execution remained the only punishment that could follow a murder conviction, and after 1973 a number of defendants were convicted of murder and sentenced to death. No one convicted of murder after 1973 was actually executed.

Some of those sentenced to death might have had their penalty commuted to life imprisonment even if capital punishment was an active penalty – throughout Manx history many capital sentences have been commuted to a lesser penalty by the Crown. There is strong evidence, however, that the death penalty was a dead letter before 1973.

After the abolition of capital punishment for murder in the UK, Manx newspapers considered that the penalty would not be carried out (see See (1963) Mona’s Herald 16 July: (1968) Manx Examiner 25 January; (1968) Isle of Man Times 26 February.) and there is some evidence that this was recognised well in advance by the convict (See (1980) Isle of Man Times April 22). Most telling, however, is the dicta of the Staff of Government in Frankland (1987). Frankland had been convicted of murder, sentenced to death, and then had his conviction reduced to manslaughter by the Privy Council. He was sent back to the Staff of Government to receive a sentence for manslaughter. Hytner J.A. delivered the judgement of the Court, noting that ‘although you must have been told you were not going to be hanged, you did suffer the unpleasant and probably frightening experience of being sentenced to death’. Thus, the Manx appellate court recognised that, by 1980 at the very latest, no murderer would actually be executed.

By this point, then, the Manx had developed a peculiar local practice, described by Eddie Lowey MHK as a ‘macabre dance’. A murderer would be convicted by a Manx Court, of a capital offence under a Manx statute, and be sentenced to death by the Manx Deemster. He would then apply to the British Home Office for commutation, which would inevitably be granted. All the actors in the drama recognised that he was under no danger of actually being executed. In the statute books, all murderers were executed. In practice, none were.

In 1991 Tony Teare killed Corrine Bentley. He was tried for murder in 1992, found guilty and, as usual, sentenced to death. But this time, commutation would not follow. Teare appealed to the Appeal Division of the Manx Court, on the basis that his conviction was unsafe and unsatisfactory. The Appeal Division accepted the arguments of counsel, and a retrial was ordered. Sentence could not be carried out pending an appeal, so at no point was the intervention of the Home Office required to prevent execution. Between his original conviction and his retrial, the legal structure he was subject to underwent an important change.

Following his original conviction, a Bill entered Tynwald to replace the death penalty with a mandatory life sentence. The principal driving force behind the Bill was a recognition that the sentence was being passed with no possibility of execution, and a desire to bring the law into line with actual practice. In 1993, the death sentence for murder was abolished.

In 1994, Teare was retried, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment. As the Manx Independent noted ‘Teare is ensured a place in the history books as the last man in Britain sentenced to hang … And he is the first killer to receive the Island’s now mandatory life sentence for murder’. And the last to undergo the macabre dance of the Isle of Man.