Pitcairn sexual assault trial of 2004 denied the island's colonial status, and with it the United Kingdom's judicial authority. Defence lawyers for the seven accused men claimed that British sovereignty over the islands was unconstitutional: HMS "Bounty" mutineers, from whom almost all of the current island population is descended (together with Polynesians), had effectively renounced their British citizenship by committing a capital offence in the burning of the "Bounty" in 1790, they said. According to the Public Defender of the Pitcairn Islands Paul Dacre (who was appointed in 2003), islanders still celebrated this act annually by burning an effigy of the "Bounty" in a symbolic rejection
Tubuai part of Cook's group, translated). The next Europeans to arrive were the mutineers of the HMS "Bounty" in 1789. Mutineer Fletcher Christian, in looking for an island on which to permanently hide, had "scoured" Bligh's maps and nautical charts and decided on Tubuai. Upon arrival at Tubuai, a conflict arose while the mutineers were still on their ship and several islanders were killed in their canoes. The site of this event in the lagoon on the north side of the island is called "Baie Sanglant" (Bloody Bay). Mutineer James Morrison wrote: "The Island is full of Inhabitants for its size