CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
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may wish, or feel obliged to pursue rather different policies. I see the matter as one of expediency rather than principle, since it depends on the extent to which he defers to local opinion or to some outside opinion about the emotive issue of capital punishment.'
It would be very helpful to have any views which your acting Attorney-General may have on this question. However, if Rushford's view is confirmed, it would obviously be necessary to have strong political arguments if the current practice in Hong Kong and the other Dependent Territories were to be maintained and justified by Ministers in public. It would therefore be very helpful to have your assessment, following your return to Hong Kong, not only of the likelihood of the exercise of the death penalty becoming a public issue, either through EXCO or from some other quarter, but also of the problems which would arise if from a certain date the death penalty were carried out in Hong Kong.
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It seems to me that the latter difficulties might cover both internal objections in Hong Kong, including the emotive problem of reviving the use of the penalty after so long a period, and the risk of spill-over into the British political and parliamentary scene. In looking at both these aspects, it would be helpful to have an estimate of the number of occasions, on average, on which the death penalty might be expected to be imposed in Hong Kong in any year. Obviously some aiming-off should be made for the possibility that juries might be more reluctant to convict if they knew that the case was a capital one than if they were in fact considering a life sentence. (Does the fact that there were no executions from 1966 to 1972 before the Tsoi case provide any pointers on this?)
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Trus
Dil
R D Clift
Hong Kong and General Department
CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
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