TNAG-0722-FCO40-920-Capital-punishment-in-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 34

CONFIDENTIAL

380/1

Sep. minuti -269

Nllybe

GOVERNMENT HOUSE,

TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS,

THE WEST INDIES,

There seem to me to be powerful arguments, to be taken into account when next the subject arises. In the meanting

can you

263

to be in houdon, and if he is calling on the PUS. If so,

prepare a brief accordigh. HK&G. Dept

W21418 Sunce dur. Watson has already left, the beat way of answering his letter is through discussion in the Dept?

Sir Michael Palliser GCMG Permanent Under Secretary of State FCO

нка 3861

RECEIVED

Dean Po

No

INDEX

Y NO. 51

- 7 AUG 1978

PA

Unite Scontrary,

Action Taken

गेंद | Ce

May timet

3/2

ec: WIAD

Su A. Duft See 276 reply Mr. Shattan PS/PUS.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE DEPENDENT OVERSEAS TERRITORIES

1. May I refer to your letter to all Officers Administering Govern- 210) ment of 4 April 1978, and on my departure from this Dependent Territory

make one more personal plea that the nettle of abolition of capital punishment in British dependencies should be grasped in London.

2. In an attempt to stimulate local action here, I have commended abolition as a necessary and desirable reform to the Chief Minister both orally and in writing. I have however little hope of any early, move to amend Turks and Caicos Islands legislation, and even if local opinion could be brought to face the issue I would still be doubtful if the result would be any different from earlier initiatives. Territories such as this, with populations equivalent only to that of a small English market town, are not well equipped to debate such a fundamental issue. If there is no murder case awaiting trial, there is a tendency for local opinion (even where political and religious atti- tudes do not intrude) to hold that the retention of the death penalty should be retained as a protection for the community against crimes of violence: once a case occurs, the highly charged emotions aroused make cool consideration of the principle impossible.

3. In seven years in two small territories in the West Indies I have been mercifully spared the need to decide on the exercise of the Prero- gative of Mercy: but in both territories, with each case of homicide, I have been nagged by the intractable troubles in store. In Anguilla in my time, the normal problems would have been compounded by my certainty that neither I nor any one else on that island had an undoubted lawful right to sign a Death Warrant. Here in the Turks and Caicos Islands that right would be unquestioned, but there is neither executioner nor scaffold to carry out the sentence of the law. I am sure that HMG would neither permit a condemned man, as in the past, to be sent to Jamaica for execution, nor supply the means to carry it out here. In addition to the stately steps required by the Memorandum on the Prero- gative of Mercy, anyone in my position would, and will, be faced by the horrifying problem of how to comply with the law if a reprieve is refused.

4. I do not therefore believe it is fair or right to leave to the legislatures of these minute territories a decision which even in Britain was of such controversial difficulty, nor to loave DAGS

/exposed to

CONFIDENTIAL