Penalties of Empire: Capital Trials in Colonial Hong Kong

An eye-opening study of the evolution of the death penalty in Hong Kong.

"We must have a procedure - if we are going to hang anyone - that is just," said Chief Justice Sir Francis Piggott in 1909, on discovering that Chinese persons accused of murder were being denied interpretation in Hong Kong’s courts. Due process, no matter how costly or inconvenient, was "one of the penalties of empire," he declared.

Penalties of Empire explores how judges, juries, and lawyers strove to deliver justice ...