The stories of those who have been executed in The Bahamas are heretofore untold. In telling these stories and in linking them to the changing course of Bahamian history, the present research adds an important dimension to our understanding of Bahamian history and politics. The major theme of this effort is that the changing practice of the death penalty is more than a consequence of changes in crime. The use of the death penalty parallels the changing dynamics of colonial and racial relations, resulting in four distinctive eras of death penalty practice: (1) the slave era, where executions and commutations were used liberally and with a clear racial patterning; (2) a long era of stable colonialism, characterized by poverty, economic and colonial marginalization, and few executions; (3) an era of unstable colonialism characterized by increasing racial political turmoil and intensive and efficient use of the death penalty; and (4) the current independence era of high murder rates and equally high impediments to the use of executions.