CONFIDENTIAL
2.
Parliament on the abolition of capital punishment in Ulster; the vote to abolish was carried. There was much anxious deliberation in the FCO as to whether it was expedient to allow an execution in a British dependency at that juncture, and what effect such an execu- tion would have on the (Heath) Government. The FCO played for time by instructing the Governor to arrange an examination of the accused by a team of psychiatrists, even though the man showed no sign of mental instability; the examination proved nothing. It was then decided to commute the sentence; as this would need to be done in London to safeguard the Governor's position, the accused was prompted to send a petition to The Queen, which was accepted. The Governor was subsequently informed regretfully that the sentence had had to be commuted on account of the potentially grave damage to the British Government's position which an execution in Hong Kong would have caused "when there [was] no elected legislature and where in the last analysis HMG [were] in a position to give orders".
7. There is still no elected legislature in Hong Kong, nor any likelihood of one in the foreseeable future, and HMG could, if it wished, abolish the death penalty there, though this would be an extraordinary use of its powers. The other dependencies which retain capital punishment have voted to do so; their legislatures are elected. HMG could not abolish the death penalty in three of these dependencies (Belize, Bermuda, Montserrat) by any means short of an Act of Parliament and in the remainder it would, again,be an extraordinary use of HMG's constitutional powers to do so. It would consequently be an even more serious move to disregard local feeling in the other dependencies by commuting a death sentence when no mitigating circumstances existed. Automatic commutation in London could not be recommended as normal procedure where the views of a Governor on capital punishment and those of the local people were at variance; indeed, to attempt to use such commutation as a means to abolish the death penalty as established by law would be unconstitu- tional. Where no grounds exist for commutation, no Governor could be criticised for allowing the law to take its course.
8. Aw. Rus
Rus inford
мне леен
and agills with this
att Rook.
ийлике.
26 September 1980
PS I
BRatt R
B Brett Rooks (Miss)
Hong Kong and General Department
have in hand the other deepting you requested.
CONFIDENTIAL
зда.