دو
CONFIDENTIAL
HKB 380
FROM:
R M Marsden
RECEIVER IN
BY
O 1 AUG 1990
DATE:
cc:
Hong Kong Department
23 July 1990
Mr McLaren
Mr Beamish
Mr Fifoot, Legal
Advisers
Mr Gorham, WIAD
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE DEPENDENT TERRITORIES
1.
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Thank you for showing us a copy of your draft submission. I understand that you need to submit tonight because
Mr Sainsbury is leaving for Mexico tomorrow evening.
2.
Following a discussion with Mr Fifoot, there are one or two additional points on which we would like to consult Sir D Wilson. We will be doing this overnight. In the meantime, we have the following comments on your draft submission:
(i) Paragraph 5. We assume that you have already taken informal soundings with the Home Office which indicate that their Ministers would be prepared to see such a potentially controversial clause added to the Criminal Justice Bill. If so, perhaps this should be made clear in the submission. In our view, the draft submission and the draft minute to the Home Secretary are perhaps a little over optimistic in suggesting that the device of adding a clause to the Criminal Justice Bill will make it possible for the capital punishment issue to be placed "in a quieter context" and to be "submerged by other business".
(ii) Paragraph 7. We are pleased to note that in the latest version of your submission the "Hong Kong solution" is treated as a variant of (iii) rather than a separate option. We suggest that the first part of this para should be amended as follows:
"A variant of (iii) has worked successfully in Hong Kong since 1973, although whether it will continue to be tolerated when the legislature becomes more representative in 1991 remains to be seen. It has been the practice since 1973 (when the Commons were debating capital punishment in Northern Ireland) for the Governor of Hong Kong to commute death sentences on the grounds that the Executive Council, not being responsible to the legislature, could not advise the Governor against exercising the prerogative of mercy. (ExCo is asked to advise what alternative sentence they would propose it the Governor commutes a death sentence but not whether the sentence itself should be commuted). Unlike Hong Kong, however, the Caribbean DTS and Bermuda already have
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CONFIDENTIAL
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