But his guilt or innocence doesn't matter. No one should be incarcerated for 33 years in the shadow of the execution chamber. It is an act of barbarism to keep any man in those conditions. Several eminent human rights lawyers have not hesitated to describe it as torture. The Privy Council, the final court of appeal for many Caribbean countries, ruled in a Jamaican case that keeping a man on death row for more than five years amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.