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This
that a miscarriage of justice might otherwise take place. policy is based on the reasoning that the Governor, being on the spot, is much better placed to form a judgement based on all aspects of a case than is the Secretary of State. In latter years justification for the maintenance of the doctrine has been that democratically elected legislatures in the various territories (except Hong Kong) have themselves decided to maintain capital punishment. In the recent cases in Bermuda the Secretary of State considered all the processes leading up to the final confirmation of the sentences but could find no evidence to suggest that such a miscarriage had occurred. The Secretary of State has indicated that he is prepared to look at the whole question of capital punishment in the Dependent Territories if that is Parliament's
wish.
6. Hong Kong (Tsoi 1973).
In the unique circumstances of Hong Kong, the Creech-Jones policy is considered not to apply. Hong Kong is a territory where the legislative is not democratically elected by the local population, whereas in all of the other territories where capital punishment is retained there are democratically elected local legislatures, which have in every case confirmed the decision not to abolish the death penalty.
7. Because of these special circumstances the then Secretary of State recommended in the Tsoi case in 1973 (the only case since the death penalty was abolished in the UK where a death penalty imposed by a Court in Hong Kong was not commuted locally) that the petition should be accepted and the sentence was commuted to one of life imprisonment.
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