PRESS AFLAME.

Shannon News, 7 September 1928, Page 2

PRESS AFLAME.

THE TRIPLE REPRIEVE. (“Sun” Special). LONDON, August 22. The reprieve of the three men—Pereival Taylor, James Weaver and George Donova —who had been found guilty of the murder of Einest Smith, an elderly retired druggist, on the eve of the day fixed for their execution, is receiving widespread attention in the press throughout. England. It was alleged that Smith had been taken to the Downs and robbed, and that his death, which occurred at his home later on, was due to a septiccondition following on injuries received when he was attacked.

Mr Calvert, the secretary of the National Council for the Abolition of the Death Penally, says that the reprieve constitutes a' bad precedent. Hitherto the Homo Office had maintained the tradition that a final decision must be given 48 hours before the time fixed for the cxecutiqn, when all agitations must be stopped. The present decision, he said, encourages the idea that agitations can be carried on to the last moment. This, he claimed, would have a bad effect on everybody, and especially on the emotions of a condemned man’s relatives. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. (Published in the “Daily Mail”) The political correspondent of the “Daily Mail” states that Sir William Joynson-Hicks, explaining the commutation of the sentences, said to a friend: “Supposing someone else made a death-bed confession a couple of years hence, and supposing it was proved that someone else was implicated in the crime, the whole system of capital punishment would receive a staggering blow. Nobody saw the murder committed. The evidence is only circumstantial. The convicted men have not wavered in their denials.”