A/HRC/17/12 The most recent elections, in January 2010, returned the Government of Denzil Douglas for a fourth consecutive term. 7. Saint Kitts and Nevis was a party to various core international human rights treaties. It had also given consideration to other conventions to which it was not yet a party, however, it had faced challenges with respect to resources and constitutional hurdles. The process of Constitutional reform or adjustment required not only a two-thirds majority in the House, but at a referendum, there had to be a two-thirds majority in each individual island. Nevertheless, the Government remained committed to open consultations with its citizens on constitutional, judicial and legal reforms. 8. The delegation stated that the reporting obligations to the relevant treaty bodies had been affected by human resource constraints and the difficulty of collecting and consistently maintaining accurate data. As a result of the process for the universal periodic review, a recommendation had been put before the Cabinet for the establishment of a treaty division that would be dedicated to reviewing the relevant instruments to be ratified and advising on the respective obligations thereunder. An example of difficulties was the submission of reports under the relevant articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). In the case of CRC, the report was in its final stages of completion. The CEDAW report was still in its draft stage, but it was hoped that it would be submitted in the first quarter of 2011. 9. Saint Kitts and Nevis accepted that the retention of the death penalty for offences of murder was controversial and would continue to be so. However, having considered the matter, the Government had decided to retain it as one of the sentences available to the Court, which it could use at its discretion. Saint Kitts and Nevis accepted, from the outset, that there might be some evidence that the death penalty was not necessarily a deterrent. However, within the context of its society and the increasing crime rate, the Government would have great difficulty in justifying to its citizenry a decision to deprive the Court of that optional punishment. 10. The jurisprudence surrounding the death penalty had been highly developed and refined by the Courts to the extent that the Courts themselves would not pass such a sentence except in the most heinous crimes, which had been even further refined to being “the worst of the worst”. 11. Although the death penalty remained as a punitive measure on the books, it was not frequently carried out. In the last 30 years, the death penalty had been carried out in only three instances. During that period of time, others had been sentenced to death but those sentences had either been commuted by the Court or by the Mercy Committee – a feature of the Constitution – which intervened when justice ended and mercy began. In cases where the death penalty had been implemented, the legal procedure as set out in the Constitution had been followed. 12. Where an accused was found guilty of a crime punishable by death, the penalty of death was no longer mandatory. There was a compulsory hearing by the court, dedicated solely to the question of sentence. That meant that the judge had before him an array of options in respect of the sentence. The law required that a social inquiry report, psychiatric report, and any other report that the defence deemed necessary must be submitted to the court for such a hearing. The convicted person was allowed to call witnesses to speak on his behalf and his counsel was at liberty to try and persuade the Court against the imposition of the death penalty. If he was so sentenced, he still had the right to appeal against that sentence to the Court of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean and ultimately to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. If the convicted person failed to have his 4