C
CONFIDENTIAL : STAFF IN CONFIDENCE
-2-
B
capital sentences should be commuted.
These are annexed. In
practice, the death sentences in Belize are likely to be commuted.
The most serious cases are therefore those in the Turks and Caicos
Islands and in the British Virgin Islands.
5.
Mr Davidson, the Governor of the British Virgin Islands,
is concerned over his responsibility in having to decide whether a
capital sentence should be commuted. Mr Davidson himself says he
is opposed to capital punishment and will be uneasy if a capital
sentence is not commuted. He also suggests that there is an anomaly
between the non-use of capital punishment by the metropolitan power
and its retention in a number of very small dependencies; he regards
it as unreasonable that Governors should be required to take decisions
which in the United Kingdom prior to abolition were taken by a
Cabinet Minister. At the same time, he recognises that the British
Virgin Islanders generally favour the death penalty for murder.
There were strong protests in 1973 and again in 1978 when
Mr Davidson's predecessors commuted sentences.
Moreover,
the current British Virgin Islands case, concerns two men from
outside the Islands against whom the locals are likely to feel
particularly strongly.
6.
Mr Davidson called on Mr Ridley on 8 September. The discussion
was not recorded in detail but Mr Deare's minute of 10 September
reports Mr Ridley's direction that the subject should be aired
among FCO Ministers and that Cabinet colleagues should be made aware
of the problems likely to arise over individual cases.
/Argument
CONFIDENTIAL : STAFF IN CONFIDENCE