CONFIDENTIAL
Royal Prerogative cannot properly be used always to commute death sentences in a way which effectively abolishes the death penalty
in the dependent overseas territories even if this were the wish of a majority of the members of the House of Commons. Legal Advisers would be placed in an invidious position in that they would be bound to advise the Secretary of State in each individual case that he could not properly use the Royal Prerogative of Mercy to abolish the death penalty in the dependencies and that he must direct his mind only to the relevant circumstances of the case. There are other practical objections to a straight abandonment of "Creech-Jones" principally that the onus for deciding whether a man shall hang or not, in cases where the local Governor has decided to let the law take its course, will be placed publicly on the Secretary of State. However, the events of the past month have shown that, even with the existence of the Creech-Jones doctrine and devolution of authority
to Governors in the various dependencies, the British Government and the Secretary of State are party to the debate about each individual hanging and subjected to all the massive pressures that they would be were Creech-Jones" abolished. I suggest that in practice the effect of the Bermuda events may make it easier for the Secretary of State or any of his successors to recommend commutation to The Queen in those cases, where he feels that this is the right thing to do, though it seems unlikely that he would be confronted with relevant grounds for doing so that the Governor concerned had not already
taken into account.
8.
I recommend that the Secretary of State should put two options to his colleagues in GEN 103. The first would be for a "hybrid" motion calling for legislation and for the abandonment of "Creech- Jones" in the meantime. This should probably not be brought before the House as a Government motion but it could presumably be made clear early in any debate that the Government would accept it. The second would be for a straightforward Government motion relieving the Secretary of State of the limitations of the Creech-Jones doctrine (which was, after all, a Government measure in 1947). A point for consideration here is that the House might expect the
CONFIDENTIAL
/Government