Your ref. Our ref.
SP
.21/01
CONFIDENTIAL
R.R to Deft
130)
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
MONTSERRAT W.I.
$1x19
30th August,
19 77.
J.II. Gilmartin, Esq.,
West Indian & Atlantic Dept.,
Foreign & Commonwealth Office,
LONDON SW1A 2AH.
нка 38011
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY NO. 51 15 SEP 1977
DESK OFFICER INDEX
No
REGISTRY Action Taken
EL.
Dear Seamus,
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
(96)
Your telegram No. FR$ 76 to Belmopan.
112
I have already sent a brief telegram to say that local opinion is strongly in favour of retaining capital punishment and there is really little I can add to that.
Since my
telegram I have put a detailed paper to Council which evoked unanimous endorsement of my assessment but little in the way of thoughtful consideration. Had the subject been overtime rates for tractor drivers or the price of frozen chicken the discussion would have gone on and on. However the Chief Minister agreed to give me in due course a collation of ministerial views.
2.
An interesting comment Bramble made was that there would have been violence directed against the man who killed Vernon Greer in June had the people not known that the penalty for murder was death. In Melanesia a killing, or a much less final insult for that matter, necessitated "pay-back", usually murder, by the family of those insulted. Any legal process to punish the offence was quite extraneous to the familiar settlement and was regarded as a rather untidy addition to a respectable equation.
This explains why
a violent country such as the Solomons readily agreed to the abolition of the death penalty whereas peccable Mont- serrat wants to retain it. "Consuetudo pro lege servatur".
As was
Wyn
(G.WYN JONES)
Governor
CONFIDENTIAL
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