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
Mutiny on the Bounty 1790, the Admiralty despatched the frigate HMS "Pandora" under Captain Edward Edwards to capture the mutineers and return them to England to stand trial. "Pandora" arrived at Tahiti on 23 March 1791 and, within a few days, all 14 surviving "Bounty" men had either surrendered or been captured. Edwards made no distinction between mutineers and those who claimed they had been detained on "Bounty" unwillingly; all were incarcerated in a specially constructed prison erected on "Pandora"'s quarterdeck, dubbed "Pandora's Box". "Pandora" remained at Tahiti for five weeks while Captain Edwards unsuccessfully sought information on "Bounty's" whereabouts. The ship finally sailed