TNAG-0599-FCO40-747-Capital-punishment-in-Dependent-Territories-1977 — Page 88

PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL

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Despo

345

G P Lloyd Esq, CMG

Deputy Governor's Office Hamilton 5-24

BERMUDA

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

London S.W.1

31 May 1977

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RECEIVED IN REGISTRY No. 51

1 JUN 1977

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HKG 386/1

225

2.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Many thanks for your confidential and personal letter DG01/1 of 18 May (and for your earlier one of 27 April)

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Your letter was most timely as John Stewart's department (HKGD), which has taken over the General Section (and the Staffing Section) of the now disbanded Gibraltar and General Department, has been reviewing the way in which the prerogative of mercy is exercised in respect of the dependent territories (7 in all) where the death penalty is still retained. I have no doubt that this is a matter that we should have anyway wanted to review once again. But the Tacklyn and Burrows cases (and another one coming up in Belize) have given it a fresh and urgent significance.

3. A comprehensive submission has now been made to Ministers (and I must emphasise that we have no indication at present of how they will react), recommending that we should seek to avoid the use of the death penalty in dependent territories on the grounds that, inter alia, it is repugnant to the views of the British Parliament, as expressed on a number of occasions over the years.

4. The submission goes on to discuss how, if Ministers so decide, the decision should be brought into effect. There are legal, constitutional and political objections to instructing Governors to introduce legislation to abolish capital punishment; to removing the prerogative of mercy from Governors and restoring it to HM The Queen; or to the Parliament's legislating to abolish capital punishment. It would be possible to recommend that the Secretary of State should advise The Queen to exercise her prerogative of mercy in each and every case that a Governor of a dependent territory does not commute a death sentence. But this in turn would raise the question of whether it would be right that a prerogative, which is essentially discretionary in character, should always be exercised in a fixed manner. Our proposal is therefore that Ministers should announce in Parliament that the 1947 Creech-Jones formula would no longer govern the exercise of the prerogative of mercy and that the Secretary of State would in future consider each case with regard to

PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL

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