PUBLIC EXECUTION

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 396, 3 December 1932, Page 3

PUBLIC EXECUTION

ABOLITION SUGGESTED FRENCH COMMISSION CONSIDE REVISION OF PENAL CODE. ANTIQUATED METHODS. The guillotining of the Russian Paul Gorgouloff, murderer of -the venerable President Panl Doumer, which .took j place on the murky morning of 14th j September, may well have been one j of the last public executions to_ occur in France, according to the Parisi correspondent of the Amer'ican Associated Press. A committee charged with revising the penal code, a document practically untouched since the days of the first Napoleon, has been sitting at the Ministry of Justice, he sayls, and 'one of the points its members are said to be agreed on is the abolition of public executions of the death penalty. Executions in France are likely to be carried out hereafter in the interior courtyards of prisons, in the .presence of the judicial and jienitentiary authorities, the condemned man's lawyers and the twelve jurymen who hr ought in the fateful verdiet. It is even doubtful whether the drafters of tlie revised code plan to admit the Press.

One of the reasons hitherto aavanced in favour of public execution has been that the gruesome sight of a man's head being speedily severed might cause potential asstassins to thinlc twice before using the dagger or revolver. However^ in Paris at least, executions have long been public only in theory. The pu/iee and Republican Guard eordons keep the crowds so far away from the scene of decapitation that they can see nothing. At best, all they can hear is the thud of the mighty lcniie. Aside from the police, the judicial authorities, the chaplain, lawyers, and priison guards, the only people who actually see a guillotining undei- the present system are the newspaper men. Photographers may take pictures of the prepaptions, the crowds and the driving away) of the hearse, but they are sent away hefore the actual execution. Rapid-fire sketch artists are tolerated, provided they do their work behind the broad backsi of sturdy policemen. Even then a strict Commissioner may put them to rout. The Gorgouloff execution evolced a great deal of nnfavourahle comment because of the allegedly antiquated methods employed. Instead of the tedious business of fitting the wooden framework of the guillotine together, which took a whole hour, it was pointed out that a collapsible "widow,' of of metal, could have been erected much more quickly and. automatically operated. Moreover, the long drive in the antiquated horse-drawn van from the Sante Priison to the place oi: execution on the Boulevard Arago — nearly a quarter' of a mile — was held to be too trying to the condemned, man, his lawyers, and the assisting clergyman. It would be more mercifutl and swift, many commentators argued, to rush him up to the foot of the guillotine in an automobile.