The Privy Council dealt with the majority of the charges against Picton. Those charges related principally to accusations of excessive cruelty in the detection and punishment of practitioners of obeah, severity to slaves, and of execution of suspects out of hand without due process. Only the latter class of charge seems to have seriously worried the Privy Council, and here Picton's argument that either the laws of Trinidad (then still the laws of the former Spanish colonial power: Abercromby had specifically instructed Picton to conduct himself according to those laws) or "the state of the garrison" (martial law) justified the immediate execution in the cases specified eventually carried the day.