EXECUTION BY ELECTRICITY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2498, 14 July 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

EXECUTION BY ELECTRICITY.

Tiut the electric shook can be applied to man in such a manner as to destroy life instantly and painlessly is beyond dispute (said the London Lancet). The shock can be applied at such tension as to rupture the veins, and even the right side of the heart. But in order to apply it with absolute precision it must be ußed in the most certain way, as it may seem to cause the death and yet may not kill. One of the most striking examples of catalepsy in our time was caused by a lightning stroke, which is the ssmeas the shock ; and the subject af the shock was so thoroughly mistaken for one dead that ho was laid out for dead, and heard the sound of his own passing-bell. Yet ho recovered, and lived many years afterward to recount the strange experience. In experiments on the lower animals, it has also been observed that a shook sufficient to produce such complete prostration as seemed fatal was not so. The greatest care, therefore, must be taken, if the electric shock be used for destroying the lives of criminals, that the criminals be not buried alive after an assumed death. In tbo farther consideration of this question the policy of the proceeding, as well as tho humanity of it, requires to be taken into account. If the execution of criminals ia to be maintained it must carry with it some degree of terror. If it does not, then, even in the eyes of those who are in favour of it, it will be looked upon as a solemn and cruel farce. It would be so, nothing more, nothing less. The argument for the Act is that " it is a terror to evildoers:" but, as we once before pointed out, if the dread of suffering is to be taken away, if the transit from life to death is to be made more easy than the common modes by disease, then in some cases an actual premium will be put upon crime. In plain words, if the death penalty be right, there is nothing whatever in the present system which is one whit too severe.