Antigua  ST. JOHNS,  _ The British Privy Council has overturned the death sentence and murder conviction of a Dominican man in Antigua. Confesor Valdez Franco's murder sentence was overturned for a manslaughter conviction, and he will be sentenced in November, his defense attorney Dane Hamilton said Thursday.

The Privy Council, a council of law lords in London that acts as the former British colony's top appeals court, handed down its decision on Aug. 14. It ruled that the jury in Valdez Franco's case should have been able to consider whether the defendant was provoked by the victim.

According to the court document, Valdez Franco said he stabbed Ismael Zorella in October 1995 in self defense outside a nightclub because Zorella had been threatening him. Valdez Franco has been on death row for four and a half years.

The leader of Valdez Franco's native Dominican Republic, President Hipolito Mejia, had asked Antiguan authorities for clemency in Valdez Franco's case.