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 with her captive guests. Coleman escaped by diving overboard and reached land. Among the abducted group were six elderly women, for whom Christian had no use; he put them ashore on the nearby island of Mo'orea. "Bounty"'s complement now comprised nine mutineers—Christian, Young, Quintal, Brown, Martin, John Williams, William McCoy, John Mills, and John Adams (known by the crew as "Alexander Smith")—and 20 Polynesians, of whom 14 were women. The 16 sailors on Tahiti began to organise their lives. One group, led by Morrison and Tom McIntosh, began building a schooner, which they named "Resolution" after Cook's ship. Morrison had