The Trinidad-based court will hear arguments from the Barbados legal team to allow the government to hang two men, Jeffrey Joseph and Lennox Boyce, who were convicted of beating another man to death in 1999.

Their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by Barbados' Court of Appeal in June last year based on a Privy Council ruling - the 1993 Pratt and Morgan case - that executions must occur within five years of conviction.

The judges had noted that the five-year period was less than eight months away and the two-year delay before the appeals of Boyce and Joseph went to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council pushed the time for the completion of those appeals over the limit.

Therefore, it said, a report from the Inter- American Human Rights Committee could not be compiled and reviewed by the Privy Council within the specified time. The court ruled that the delay was not the fault of the appellants and in view of the time frame and the circumstances of the case, the proper order would be to commute the sentences.

This is the first death penalty appeal to be brought before the CCJ. With Barbados having signed on to the appellate jurisdiction of the court, the ruling will be final.