TNAG-0554-FCO40-649-Review-of-death-sentence-in-Hong-Kong-1975 — Page 40

RECEIVED

No 52

1. APR 1975

ادا

Used as backgrand

to the brief an the combfect

for this musty. X

港總

督府

Su M. Machelene"

will no doubt opeah

this during

M

کیا

12/4

the meeting with

hand Growry-Ribet.

das Duncan

The Wald

SECRET

GOVERNMENT HOUSE

HONG KONG

∞

1467

REF.

NEXT

25th March 1975 FT

7/4

The O'Keefe

DEATH SENTENCES

Perhaps, for the wand,

adwingent of

should send an

thus

the light of the govern's talks

wilt Munsters here this week

Executive Council have become restive again about the automatic commutation of death sentences. As I explained to the Secretary of State last summer, the understanding I had reached with members about automatic commutation could not be expected to hold up indefinitely, and particularly in the event of killings in which there were no mitigating circumstances and on which they believed major social issues depended.

2.

We have had two particularly bad cases recently. The first was that in which a son hired a gang to murder his father (Paper XCR (75) 49). Although in that instance I persuaded members to give unanimous advice to commute, they gave notice that they wished a separate and full discussion of the whole issue.

3.

The first discussion took place last Tuesday. After enlarging on public dissatisfaction with the present position, the danger it involved to public security, and on the impossible position it placed them in vis-a-vis the public, myself and their Oaths of Office, they made two proposals:-

a) that if the Secretary of State continued to take the view that he would always feel obliged within the foreseeable future to advise The Queen to exercise her prerogative of mercy, he should regularise the local position by suspending (not abolishing) the death penalty in Hong Kong by an Order in Council; and/or

b) that members should feel free to abstain from giving advice on death sentences, either at all, or alternatively, in cases in which, other things being equal, they would have advised that the law should take its course.

Sir Duncan Watson, KCMG

Waldm