Court says Pitcairn under British rule

Pitcairn Island is subject to British jurisdiction and islanders accused of sexual offending can be tried under British law in New Zealand, the Pitcairn Islands Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

The court also ruled that trial without jury was not a breach of the rights of Pitcairners.

The judgment, delivered in the Papakura District Court building by Pitcairn Supreme Court Chief Judge Charles Blackie flanked by Judges Jane Lovell-Smith and Russell Johnson sitting beneath a portrait of the Queen and British and Pitcairn flags, is a further step in the trial of seven island men already committed for trial under the 1956 British Sexual Offences Act. A further six men, no longer living on Pitcairn, face similar charges.

The sitting of the full court yesterday was convened for the delivery of two pretrial judgments dealing with sovereignty and name suppression. Before adjourning the court until June, Chief Judge Blackie said name suppression should continue.

In hearings last year and in February, Pitcairn public defender, Paul Dacre, representing the seven islanders, argued that Pitcairn was self-governing and independent. If Pitcairn was not a British settlement and its residents not subject to British laws there was potential for the prosecutions to fail.

The Supreme Court's 61-page judgment went back to the European 1767 discovery of the island, the 1789 HMAV Bounty mutiny, the mutineers' arrival on the island in 1790, the islanders move to Norfolk Island in 1856 and their return from 1859 to 1864.

Mr Dacre had submitted that because the mutineers burned the Bounty, a ship of war, they committed a treasonable offence, breaking their bond of allegiance to Britain. They had sought out Pitcairn so they would be out of reach of the British justice system and no longer British citizens.

The judges, noting that Pitcairn islanders held British passports, said: "We are satisfied, as a matter of fact and law, that the mutineers were and remained British subjects until their respective deaths. They could not withdraw their allegiance through acts of treason."

A contention that the 24 children - the nucleus of today's Pitcairn population - born to the nine mutineers and their Tahitian partners were not British subjects because they were born out of wedlock and took the nationality of their mothers also failed.

Mr Dacre had also argued that once Pitcairn ceased to be a British settlement in 1856 when the islanders left for Norfolk Island it did not subsequently come under the jurisdiction of Britain on their return.

But the judges said: "The whole population moved to Norfolk Island. They went as British subjects. They were British subjects while there. They returned as British subjects. They continued as before. There was merely a short hiatus in settlement. There was no formal or unambiguous abandonment of Pitcairn because the settlers returned ...

"The durability, efficacy and legitimacy of British rule is demonstrated by the enduring nature of the adherence of both the Crown and people to each other, which has been reflected over the years in such things as the issue of stamps and coins, and the assignment of an Amorial Ensign for Pitcairn, ... royal visits, and financial and Governmental assistance."