CONFIDENTIAL
4. If the Governor in a dependent territory is to be supplanted, responsibility should be placed in the hands of a single Minister, as it is in principle wrong that the final responsibility in capital cases should be diffused. To place final responsibility in a collectivity such as an Advisory Committee is to risk that responsibility being exercised with insufficient care, since no one member of the collectivity is individually responsible for the decision eventually reached.
5. At present the Governor operates as a buffer between the local government and the Secretary of State. He can often influence the Executive Council or Advisory Committee in favour of commutation and can ignore their advice if it is ill-founded.At the moment in the British Virgin Islands there is a case where the Judge considers the jury to have been biased against an outsider convicted of murder. The Judge feels that the circumstances warrant a reprieve but it is not thought likely that the Mercy Committee will share this view. If the Governor were obliged to accept their advice, he would be powerless to take account of the trial Judge's opinion. A single local Minister is likely to take a stiffer line than a Governor, so that more death sentences will be upheld than at present; and the Governor would have no say in the deliberations of the Advisory Committee, which would meet under the chairmanship of the Minister, not his own.
6.
There are accordingly some serious objections of principle to Sir Peter Ramsbotham's proposal and I recommend that it should not be pursued.
7. The Legal Adviser concurs.
[
23 February 1978
cc:
PS/Lord Goronwy-Roberts Sir A Duff
Sir I Sinclair
Mr Stratton
Mr Rushford WIAD
2
CONFIDENTIAL
0.B. Steent.
fo.ß.
A B Stewart
Hong Kong & General Dept
I
адлес.
R.J. Smother
4
23 Feb.
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