DEATH PENALTY

Hokitika Guardian, 20 February 1930, Page 5

DEATH PENALTY

ABOLITION QUESTION

[United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.— Copyright.]

LONDON, February 18

Women are thronging the public Sessions of fcho Select Committee on

Capital Punishment which is giving serious thought, to the problem of the alteration of the,,murder law. • The Governor of Maidstone Prison, the evidence, said that from his long experience of murderers, lie was firmly, convinced that many murders were so‘diabolical and so cunningly planned that the perpetrators certainly should ■ be’ executed, as they were a menace to'any community, and even to ' a

prisoty community on , the contrary, thoso who committed murder from jealousy, under great emotional stress, might well be imprisoned. ..He said that, the hanging of women should be abolished. He suggested that) the enlargement of the legal definition of manslaughter might include, certain oases now classed as murder, for which death was the only penalty.

Other views include those of Lord Justice Darling. He is convinced that death is a justifiable punishment for vjrilful •murder. S; i " Mr Justice Avery declared that the abolition of the death penalty would lead to “ a "disastrous increase of murder

Lord Buckmaster contended that savage, punishment dees not prevent many murders.