Lord Porter.-

Their Lordships have already indicated that they would humbly advise His Majesty that this appeal should be dismissed and that they would give their reasons for tendering such advice in due course. Those reasons are set out below. The appellant and his wife Amelia Youth were jointly charged on indictment in the Supreme Court of Turks and Caicos Islands before His Honour S. T. B. Sanguinetti and a jury of twelve with the murder of one Poland Smith in the Parish of Saint George at the Bight of Blue Hills. Both pleaded not guilty but were convicted and sentenced to death: the wife's sentence however was afterwards commuted to penal servitude for life. The husband alone appealed first to the Supreme Court of Judicature of Jamaica and subsequently by special leave to His Majesty in Council. The appellant lived in a small settlement on Caicos Island called Thomas Stubbs Settlement which appears to have consisted of only three houses: one inhabited by the appellant and his wife, the next by the deceased man, his wife and family, and the third by the dead man's mother-in-law. There was ample evidence of bad blood between the appellant and the deceased and indeed that the appel