CONFIDENTIAL
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE DEPENDENT OVERSEAS
TERRITORIES
Note by Officials
Introduction
1. The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary has proposed (DOP(77) 9) that Her Majesty's Government's policy towards capital punishment in the dependent overseas territories (DOT) should be reconsidered. The purpose of the reconsideration would be to find means either of abolishing the death penalty in those DOTS in which it is still retained or of revising the existing constitutional procedures so as to ensure that, in all cases where a death sentence has been imposed, there is an opportunity for the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary to advise The Queen to exercise Her Prerogative of Mercy. On the Prime Minister's instructions, this report has been prepared by officials of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Home Office, Lord Chancellor's Office and Attorney General's Department, under Cabinet Office chairmanship, and is submitted for the consideration of the Defence and Oversea Policy Committee.-
The Present Position in the Dependent Overseas Territories
2. In 1965, and again in 1970, the Secretary of State responsible for the DOT invited the Governors of those territories to consider introducing changes in legislation on capital punishment in order to bring it into line with that in the United Kingdom. As a result of this invitation, capital punishment for murder was abolished in nine DOTs: Ascension Island, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, The Gilbert Islands, Pitcairn, St Helena, The Solomons, Tristan da Cunha and Tuvalu (The British Indian Ocean Territory and the British Antarctic Territory, having no resident population, were not affected). The legislatures of Belize, Bermuda, The British Virgin Islands, The Cayman Islands, Montserrat, The Turks and Caicos and Hong Kong resolved not to consider the proposed legislation and capital punishment for murder is accordingly retained in these seven DOTS, In these territories, as in all the Colonial dependencies for more than 100 years, the Prerogative of Mercy is delegated to the Governor and regularly exercised by
In all these him, but this does not empty The Queen of Her Prerogative Power.
•
1
CONFIDENTIAL