David Mitchell Put to Death 23 Years Ago

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NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Twenty-three years ago on January 6, 2000, convicted murderer David Mitchell was put to death at Her Majesty’s Prison.

He was the last man to die under the law for his crimes. While capital punishment is still on the law books as the ultimate sentence, it has not been carried out since.

Mitchell’s death was the conclusion to five months of legal wrangling after the death warrant was issued.

He was convicted of the 1994 double murder of German couple Horst and Trude Hennings.

Prosecutors and police reports say Mitchell, who was 20-years-old at the time, broke into the couple’s Treasure Cay, Abaco home and stabbed them to death, as they slept.

Police believed it was a robbery gone bad and claimed to have found him washing blood from his pants. 

The legal battle to save his life began four months earlier, going as far as the Privy Council, which may have commuted the death sentence to life in prison.

The victim’s families and german government called for clemency.

In 1997 a landmark London Privy Council ruling deemed that executing a death row inmate after five years was inhumane. Mitchell hit the five-year threshold in August,1999.

Attempts by his then-lawyer, Philip Davis, to get a stay of execution on a constitutional motion, were unsuccessful.

Mitchell’s final appeal before the Privy Council was dismissed on December 14, 1999.

In late December of that year, Mitchell was read his death warrant and preparations began for a double execution on January 6, 2000.

Convicted murderer and well-known beautician John Higgs was scheduled for hanging the same day, convicted of the 1993 murder of his wife Joan.

Higgs escaped the gallows by taking his own life the day before his scheduled hanging. He was found with a deep cut to his right wrist.

Despite the dramatic turn of events hours before, 27-year-old Mitchell faced the gallows early on the morning of January 6, 2000.

Media reports on that day, described an “eerie silence” at the Fox Hill compound.

After 7 that morning, a death notice hung from the prison gate, confirming the execution.

A few hours later, he was buried in the prisoner’s section of a nearby graveyard.

Mitchell’s execution ended a spate of four years of hangings, after a 12-year hiatus.

Thomas Reckley was hanged on March 13, 1996; Dwayne McKinney on March 28, 1996; Two years later, on October 15, 1998, Trevor Fisher and Richard Woods were put to death in a double execution; and Mitchell’s execution came 2 years after that.

It’s been 23 years since this series of events. And while still on the books as the punishment for a capital crime, the gallows at the Department of Corrections remain unused.