TNAG-0837-FCO40-1045-Capital-punishment-in-the-Dependent-Territories-1981 — Page 38

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Legal Advises.

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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN DEFENDENT TERRITORIES

Background

Department

HKGD

3. The administration of justice in the Dependent Territories has long been considered a matter for local governments in which it is not appropriate for the British Government to intervene. This ingludes the subject of capital punishment, both the question of whether it should be retained and, in territories where it is retained, the circumstances in which it should be applied. Even the exercise of the Royal

Prerogative of Mercy has been delegated to Governors, and although this does not preclude the possibility of subsequent appeals to either the Secretary of State or The Queen, the

normally policy in such cases has verbly been to support the Governor's decision (except in those very rare cases where to do so might result in a miscarriage of justice).

This policy, which is based on the assumption that the man on the spot is in a far better position than anybody in London to consider all the circumstances of a particular case, is known as the Creech-Jones Doctrine, after the Colonial Secretary who set the policy out in a statement in December 1947 (copy attached), although in fact he was doing no more than describing what was already a long established practice.

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16 Capital punishment is retained in the following Dependent Territories (the year of the last execution in each territory is given in brackets):

Belize (1974)

Bermuda (1977)

British Virgin Islands (1972)

Cayman Islands (1928)

Hong Kong (1966)

Montserrat (1960)

Turks and Caicos Islands (1946)

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Dd 0532000 800M 5/78 HMSO Bracknell

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