PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
Your ref HKG 380/1 Our ref DGO 1/1
Telephone 2-2587
(917)
Deputy Governor's Office
Hamilton 5-24. Bermuda
J A B Stewart Esq OBE
Hong Kong and General Department
FCO
Dear Stewart
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY No. 51 11 AUS...
3 August 1977
227
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
HKG 380/1
66
Many thanks for your letters of 18 and 20 July. We have marked both "Personal", because the two letters of mine to which they referred were in the Personal Series.
A reply has been sent to Dr Sterrer on the lines you suggested.
2.
3.
Once Cabinet has cleared abrogation of the Creech-Jones doctrine I shall be grateful to learn what procedure will in future be followed when Governors do not commute particular death sentences. In his letter of 31 May Harry Stanley explained the theoretical objection to any decision (and a fortiori there- fore to any announcement) that the prerogative will always be exercised in a fixed manner. But he went on to say that the Secretary of State would in practice be "free to advise The Queen to exercise her prerogative of mercy in all cases", so implying we should assume that capital punishment is being abolished de facto.
4. If that assumption is correct, then it must follow that the Secretary of State will be intervening whenever necessary, regardless of whether a condemned man or his solicitors petition The Queen. May I urge that, once the proposed statement has been
Cont'd
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
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