Murderers Should All Be Hanged

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1052, 16 August 1930, Page 18

Murderers Should All Be Hanged

Sir Archibald Bodkin on “The Wild Beasts Of Society”

HERE is case after case of murders committed for base motives, and for those murders there can be no other punishment than hanging.

Sir Archibald Bodkin, who until last March was Director of Public Prosecutions, expressed this view when giving evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, which is considering the question of capital punishment.’

“My opinion,” he said, “is most undoubtedly that capital punishment should be retained not only as a suitable punishment for the offence, but also as an important deterrent. There are xtersons who don’t care, and are not deterred either by hanging or life sentence, because they are so deliberately wicked and malicious. Those enemies of society—the wild beasts of society—if they can gain their immediate end of murdering A, B, or C, or A, B, and C without too much risk of immediate will commit those crimes.” As regards respite from the death penalty, the consideration by the Home Secretary of individual cases was quite sufficient. Mr. Lovat Fraser (a member of the committee): How many murder cases have you been concerned with? —Scores. No doubt you are engaged in writing your reminiscences? I am not, and I never will. Mr. Fraser: You call murderers the wild beasts of society. Thera are other people who say these criminals are not wild beasts —that they are sick people. Sir Archibald: Oh, absurd —piffle! Dr. Ethel Bentham suggested that juries were loth to convict in murder oases.

Sir Archibald: I don’t agree. I think British juries are very courageous.

They pay rapt attention to the evidence in murder cases, and they rightly demand very high standards of proof. Take the BywatersTliompson case. If ever there was a case which might appeal to all the feelings of the jury, and induce them to take a sentimental view, it was that; yet they were not swayed from their duty.