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in defence of human lives.
I agree.
But unfortunately
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deciding what is the honourable thing to do is note always a straight forward matter. There are other
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considerations that enter into the decision besides the question of the rights and wrongs of capital punishment. Since the British Government has devolved on the Bermuda Government considerable responsibility for their own affairs, as part of their progress towards eventual independence (if that is what they want), it would not have been honourable for me to take action that would
melamart of that have been tantamount to taking back part of that responsibility. The Bermuda Assembly is elected on the basis of universal adult franchise. In 1975 its members voted by a majority of 25 votes to 9 in a free vote to retain capital punishment. I could not therefore claim to be in any ignorance of what the local will was on this question. As a result of the disturbances that were caused by the recent executions, the Speaker of the Bermuda Assembly has appointed a Select Committee to reconsider the question of capital punishment in the territory.
You refer to the Nairn case in the Bahamas in 1969, where the then Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Michael Stewart, agreed to commute the death sentence. However, he did this precisely because he had reason to suspect that if the execution had been allowed to go ahead a miscarriage of justice might have occurred, since there
ethere were strong grounds to believe that Nairn's mental state was such that he should not have been condemned under the standards which normally apply in such circumstances. In the Bermuda cases, I examined all aspects of the legal procedures that had been followed but could find no evidence to suggest that there could be a miscarriage of justice.
You also refer to the UN declaration on the granting of independence. I can assure you that this Government is entirely committed to the principle of granting independence as speedily as possible, wherever we believe that that is what the people of any of our dependent
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