ADVOCATE OF LASH.

Shannon News, 22 June 1928, Page 2

ADVOCATE OF LASH.

AMERICAN JUDGE'S VIEWS,

NEW TOKK, April 4,

Judge Marcus Kavanagh, who startled the country three years ago by urging the abolition of the American criminal code and the adoption in its place of the English code, has now 'gone a step further in his book, "The Criminal and His Allies," in recommending the free use of the lash as a deterrent to crime. Judge Kavanagh states 350,000 men and women in the United States make their living wholly or partly by crime. He bases his estimate and the material in his book, on the results of 33 years on the bench, and three years spent in research. These criminals, he estimates, committed 12,000 murders, and took enough booty to pay for the Panama Canal. "Public apathy, quibbling courts of review, antiquated legal-processes, new means designed to protect the criminal rather than the public, and unscrupulous lawyers," are blamed for the crime ...record of the United States, which Judge Kavanagh terms the most lawless and law-ridden of civilised nations. The use of the lash is one of many recommendations he makes for the reduction of crime rate. "No underworld lord may retain the respect of his followers after he has winced! under the pain of a whipping," he says. "No juvenile culprit may strut before his gang after an official spanking. The cat is feared more than a goal sentence."

The curse of trial technicalities, for which, he blames the Supreme Court, could be remedied with the following statute of 18 words, says the Judge:— "All laws and rules of Courts, concerning forms, practice and procedure, shall be directory only, and not manda-* tory." He also attacks alienists, defends the death penalty, and pleads for equal punishment of men and women. "I am sure no man may be as good as a good woman," Judge Kavanagh remarks. '' It isn't in him. And no man may be as bad as a bad woman He hasn't; the same genius for evil. A woman is always more hurt by her fall than is a man by his fall, for the reason that a man only falls from the first storey, while the woman tumbles from the roof.