394
MR. J. M. DUFFY'S LETTER TO MRS. ELLIOTT
CONFIDENTIAL
App ix 41
#KR
本署檢 CUR REF
*M YOUR Ref
政府合署(中堂)
Mrs E. Elliott
55 Kung Lok Road
Kwun Tong KOWLOON
LEGAL DEPARTMENT, CENTRAL GOVERNMENT OFFICES.
(MAIN WING),
HONG KONG.
27th March 1980
Dear Mrs Elliott,
I thank you for your letter of the 24th March,
You appear to have misunderstood what I said to you when we discussed this case with the Attorney General. As prosecuting counsel I am forbidden by the rules of my profession from interviewing witnesses for the Crown, and I did not do so in this case. What I told you was that I had personally scrutinized the file including the statements which the Chinese police officers had taken from the witnesses who had made allegations against MacLennan. The statements containing allegations against MacLennan had been taken with a view to a different prosecution, and not specifically for the purpose of gathering evidence against MacLennan. The decision to charge MacLennan was taken in these Chambers and not by the Police.
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Whether you agree with the present law relating to homosexuality is of course a matter for you. For our part as lawyers in the Attorney General's Chambers, it is our responsibility to make decisions about the prosecution c persons and in particular to decide if there is sufficient evidence that they have broken the existing lavs. This was such a case.
I believe that the circumstances surrounding MacLennan's death have been publicly aired during the recent Coroner's inquest. You are of course entitled to hold your own views regarding the evidence led during that inquest. I do feel personally that it is important to try to separate in one's mind issues which are peripheral from issues which are more central. Whatever you may feel about the evidence given by the Police, the expert testimony of the pathologists and that of the ballistics expert stand separate and independent. In any murder enquiry or in the case of any other death which requires an inquest, it is usual for the body to be buried or cremated once the experts are satisfied that they have established the physical cause of death, Photographs are taken of the body at this time, and as I understand it, were available in this case.
Hearing about these matters second hand, as you did from Mr. Moorfoot, is always unsatisfactory and can lead to misunderstandings about the facts, either because the teller misremembers thes or fails to explain them clearly, or because the listener misunderstands or misremembers them.
PERSONAL
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