CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1013, 2 July 1930, Page 10

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

SHOULD STATE ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY? “DETERRENT THEORY” CHALLENGED A plea for the abolition of capital punishment was embodied in a letter published in The Sun yesterday, and signed by Mr. N. M. Richmond. Two Auckland doctors also contributed their opinions on the subject. The following letter from Mr. Charles Bailey is a further contribution to the controversy: Sir. — It is not difficult to understand why Mr. X. M. Richmond found such poor support for his petition for a reprieve in the case which is now very much under discussion. Local prejudice it is safe to say. has never been roused to such an extent against a prisoner. Although hundreds of citizens might have signed a petition as their protest against capital punishment, as such, the peculiar effect of the whispering compaign against the man most concerned has had a farther-reaching effect than the average person realises. As your correspondent says, “There is a real danger that an innocent man may suffer.” There is one great argument in the case for the abolition of capital punishment, and that is that, in the nature of things, the evidence in such murder trials is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and while it may be almost conclusive, there is yet the shadow of a doubt always present where there is no confession or direct evidence.

No thinking person today regards hanging as a deterrent against murder any more than it was against the many minor crimes for which it was imposed in earlier days. Would anyone be so daring as to say there were more murders in Minnesota than in Illinois? The killings in Chicago •alone would far outnumber those in the whole of Minnesota, in which State capital punishment has been abolished. Illinois still retains this penalty.

There is another phase of the question to which the majority gives no thought. That is the method of indicting capital punishment. We have progressed along the road of reformative treatment for some crimes, but Tor tli at of wilful murder we still «ling to the brutal, mediaeval, longlingering torture of strangulation If one concedes the right of the wStato to take a life for a life, one can never concede it the right to torture the victim. Death by hanging is seldom instantaneous. There will be some who say “Good enough!” Bui to anyone with human feelings, the thought of such punishment must be mental torture.