CONFIDENA LÄD
Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1
A JE Brennan Esq HOME OFFICE
Telephone 01-
LT
R. 5
8
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Date
HKK 14/16
22 October 1973
REF.
212
•
Dear Brennan,
At last week's meeting of the official Cabinet Office Committee on Hong Kong, I mentioned a death penalty case in. Hong Kong which might lead to another petition to The Queen. The accused, Lam Po, is a double murderer, whose appeal in the second case has just been dismissed by the Full Court in Hong Kong. We expect very shortly to receive advance warning of the Governor's decision whether to let the law take its course or to reprieve.
2.
We agreed at our meeting that it would now be helpful, if the case of Lam Po is likely to come before Ministers, if you could look at the papers in advance. I therefore enclose the Court records, together with a copy of a telegram from the Governor giving the background to the case.
3. If we have any general comments on these papers, it would obviously be better to let the Governor have them before he informs us of his preliminary decision. This means I would need to telegraph them within the next few days. I should therefore be very grateful if your experts could have a look at the papers urgently and let me know what the likely reaction would have been had the case come to the Home Secretary for his consideration of a reprieve.
4. The accepted doctrine is that the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary would only advise The Queen to use Her residual Prerogative of Mercy, following a decision by the Governor that the law should take its course, if there was clear evidence of a miscarriage of justice. Nevertheless in the new situation following the Tsoi case the Defence and Oversea Folicy Commilfoon decided that, while it was important to support the Governor, it was also important that the death penalty should only be use
/in the
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