New York World

“ If capital punishment were abolished, would murderers suffer any less, since they would receive not only the punishment still open to infliction by the law but also the retribution? In Thibet, for the citizens of which we feel so great a contempt, there is a reverence for that very principle of life that our civilization might do well to follow in many respects, and when where, if there are willing to suffer from the inroads of vermin, at least every man's life is sacred to the law that created him. ”

“ This mode of legal execution was brought forward by me owning to the fact that it is the quickest and most certain of all death penalties. Nevertheless I am for the banishment of this most barbarous practice. This relic of the dark ages is one of the evils afflicting the enlightened civilized nations of the present era.
In reality capital punishment is only legalized murder. Justice does not go with human passions, and a perfectly dispassionate and unbiased judgment is a myth. The chief aim with a true surgeon is to save a limb, not take it off. ”

“ When a man kills another he does it one of two ways: either he is driven by a sudden gust of passion or inflamed by drink or desire, in which case he is for the moment mad and never considers the possibility of having to suffer for what he is about to do, or he slays after careful and deliberate preparation, after making all his plans to conceal his crime and to make certain his own escape, in which case he calculates that he will not be punished at all, so it matters not to him whether the legal penalty for murder be death or imprisonment, for he expects to escape it entirely. ”

“ The true scientific solution of the difficulty is to redeem the murderer, like other criminals, and to give him a change to work out his salvation on principles dependent upon a true civilization, rather than that bequeathed to us from the middle ages.
When we can produce Life let us take it; until then let us utilize the punishment of criminals for the benefit of the state. As Walpole said, "The worst use to which you can put a man is to hang him."
The greatest argument against capital punishment is that the principle of life must not be violated. ”

“ Former Police inspector Alexander Williams has said that crime would be reduced if the death penalty were abolished. His point of view is that convictions for murder would be more certain if juror did not dread the responsibility of condemning men to death, and that the fear of the certainty of life imprisonment would act as a greater deterrent to criminals than that of the electric chair, which they have every reason to hope to escape. ”

“ Capital punishment has been abolished in Italy, Norway, Roumania, Holland, Portugal and Russia, while in Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria and several of the states of northern Germany the rulers refuse to sign death warrants, and criminals, thought sentenced to death, are virtually made life prisoners.
It will amaze many people to learn that there is no capital punishment in Russia, yet it is a fact. Murderers and traitors are sentenced to the mines in Siberia, but they are not put to death unless tried by court-martial in a military or naval court, in which case they are shot to death. ”

“ Therefore, in neither one case nor in the other is the death penalty a deterrent. But, say the opponents of capital punishment, the infliction of the death penalty makes jurors reluctant to convict, and therefore brings the law into disrepute, while if life imprisonment were the penalty convictions would be more certain and justice would not be travestied so often. ”

“ It is not so many years since the civilized world emerged from the darkness of barbarism in its treatment of criminals, and it will be only a few years more before the world comes to a realization of the fact that the divine mandate, "Thou shalt not kill," is equally binding upon the State as upon an individual. ”

“ Burning at the stake, drawing and quartering, breaking on the wheel, skinning alive and other barbarous methods of execution once common throughout the world have long been relegated to the pages of history, along with the rack, the thumb-screw and other tortures as methods of examining witnesses. ”

“ The true mother should redeem the criminal by keeping him out of harm's way, while at the same time promoting his moral and spiritual welfare and making him by proper punishment and suitable work a useful though restricted member of the State. ”

“ The methods of execution now used by the several nations are many. Great Britain, Austria, and several of the United States still cling to hanging. The theory of the gallows is that the drop breaks the criminal's neck and kills him instantly, but this holds true only when the knot is perfectly adjusted; when, as is so often the case, some trilfing maladroitness in the tying of the "hangman's knot," the victim's neck is not broken and he simply strangles to death. ”

“ And our so-called civilization has found no improvement upon this system.
France, foremost, calls the halt to capital punishment. The American nation cannot help but follow this lead.
Capital Punishment's Progress Toward Abolition As man has become gradually more and more civilized he has tempered with mercy the administration of his justice. To-day criminals are put to death the world over by methods that are as instantaneous as possible. Torture which was until very recently a part of everday execution, is now looked upon with horror. ”

“ The law of justice is unquestionable a life for a life. Yet the active principle of life is so beautiful a fact, so mysterious, so baffling in all its workings, so insoluble even to science -- that is so profoundly bent upon concealing it -- that the scientist confronted with this problem must cry out "Do not destroy that beauty which it is our despair to solve ”