Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1913 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 January 1903, Page 2

Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1913 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

The righteousness and warrantry for capital punishment has been argued by statesmen, economists, philanthropists and men of all grades and opinions in all civilised for over a century, without any decided understanding being arrived at, Such punishment is, when viewed in its most favorable light, an admission on the part of the law to reform the individual. Such an admission is entirely at variance with the higher teachings of Christianity and cannot, therefore, be considered sound. History records many instances of innocent persons having suffered death, for crimes which subsequent information proved them to be innocent of. If, therefore, the old adage has anything in it that it is better that ten guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should suffer, we have still a further argument in favor of the abolition of the death penalty. The execution of Patrick Kenniff at Brisbane on the 12th and the last words of the condemned man come with startling effect in dealing with this very question. When on the scaffold 'with the rope round his neck, be declared his innocence in the following terms : “ Before God, I solemnly declare I am innocent of the crime for which I have been condemned,” When a trial is proceeding the testimony of the accused may, indeed must, be accepted with suspicion. After conviction and while the person is waiting in gaol, his declaration of innocence might also bo accepted with suspicion, for there is always the hope of a reprieve. But when he is on the scaffold with all hope gone ; when he is almost in the presence of the Great Hereafter, he is not likely to perjure himself. In the case of Kenniff, the evidence was apparently pretty conclusive, but not absolutely so, and therefore not beyond all doubt. Such being the case the last words of the condemned man cannot be lightly passed over. They at all events afford yet another instance of a possible miscarriage of justice, of the probability of yet another innocent victim having been sacrificed to a law that very many right thinking people hold to be unwarrantable and unjustifiable.