Public execution

“ Wherever public executions and punishments are frequent, the common people have been observed to acquire a greater degree of insensibility, and cruelty of disposition, than in places where such scenes seldom occur.—I remember, while I was at Geneva, where executions are very rare, a young man was condemned to be hanged for murder, and there was a general gloom and uneasiness evident in every society for several days before and after the execution. ”

“ The practice of public executions was another barbarous feature of the code, and the scenes around the gallows at Tyburn, on the occasion of the execution of any criminal of note, were so disgraceful that it seems incredible that they could exist in any civilized land. ”

“ Several factors have combined to hold the death penalty so long on the throne of justice. Evolution has not yet eliminated from the human being the elementary savage instinct of bloodthirstiness, so frightfully disclosed in the [Pg 123] revolting rush of the populace eager to witness the public executions perpetrated in France in the present century; public executions in defiance of the established fact that men hitherto harmless have gone from the sight of an execution impelled to kill some equally harmless individual. ”

“ We will begin with the murderer, who wantonly embrues his hands in the blood of his fellow. So far as he has violated the laws of his country, he is a subject for public execution, and has nothing to hope for, at the tribunal of human justice. ”

“ Many reasons ought to have induced you to let justice take its course, and give the example of an execution which would have produced the excellent effect of preventing many crimes by the terror which it would have inspired. Public officers are murdered in the middle of the night—the murderers are condemned. ”

“ Public executions do more harm than good,—but are not worse than morbid public commiseration and entreaty for criminals, to whom the real justice of the law has been applied, after fair and merciful trial.... ”

“ But taking into consideration that the public eye would be offended by so dismal an exhibition, I am disposed to agree that your sentence shall be put into execution in the usual way, but unaccompanied by the statutory attendant of the punishment of the crime of murder—viz., that your body should be publicly dissected and anatomised, and I trust that if it ever is customary to preserve skeletons, yours will be preserved, in order that posterity may keep in remembrance your atrocious crimes. ”

“ For the execution of criminal law has always a certain appearance of violence. Being exercised directly on the persons of the supposed offenders, and commonly executed in the face of the public, such executions are apt to excite sentiments of pity for the sufferers, and indignation against those who are employed in such cruelties,—being seen as single acts of cruelty, rather than as ill general principles of government. ”

“ Now persons found guilty of murder are more certainly and unsparingly hanged at this time, as the Parliamentary Returns demonstrate, than such criminals ever were. So how can the decline of public executions affect that class of crimes? As to persons committing murder, and yet not found guilty of it by juries, they escape solely because there are many public executions—not because there are none or few. ”

“ The multitude did not fail to shower down their deepest execrations against all those who were concerned in this affair, and the public were so exasperated at what was justly called the murder of this man, that, had the poor fellow shewn any disposition to avoid that death which he appeared rather to court, there is little doubt but he would have been rescued, in spite of the host of constables and police officers that attended the execution. ”

“ The lives of her Majesty’s subjects are less safe with a hundred executions a year than with fifty; less safe with fifty than with twenty-five.’”
Similar results have followed from rendering public executions more and more infrequent, in Tuscany, in Prussia, in France, in Belgium. Wherever capital punishments are diminished in their number, there, crimes diminish in their number too.
But the very same advocates of the punishment of Death who contend, in the teeth of all facts and figures, that it does prevent crime, contend in the same breath against its abolition because it does not! ”

“ Even the executioner, when laying down his fasces to go a-wooing, even he bends his knee, although he is willing to offer himself up, within a short time, to domestic executions which he finds so natural that he is far from seeking any excuse for them in the fact that public executions have grown so few. ”

“ A LARK'S FLIGHT Rightly or wrongly, during the last twenty or thirty years a strong feeling has grown up in the public mind against the principle, and a still stronger feeling against the practice, of capital punishments. Many people who will admit that the execution of the murderer may be, abstractly considered, just enough, sincerely doubt whether such execution be expedient, and are in their own minds perfectly certain that it cannot fail to demoralise the spectators. ”

“ For those who were criminal offenders simple execution was not always considered severe enough; the right hand might first be amputated, the criminal then hanged and his head cut off, and his body quartered and the parts suspended in public places. ”

“ The public executioners for any kind of punishment are chosen from that class alone; but as their office is merely momentary, the unfortunate beings condemned 176always suffer considerably more from their inexperience and incapacity. ”

“ For when a nation becomes civilised, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as would be put to death at any rate. Thus the killing of a god may sometimes come to be confounded with the execution of a criminal. ”

“ It has been found that the numbers of executions every year increase: and what is the cause of this, if not that the populace of great towns are become now so accustomed to the sight of death that they attend the execution of a felon, as a farce at which they laugh or applaud, just as he may show more cowardice or courage? ”

“ He proposed a resolution declaratory that capital punishment ought to bear no relation to the rank of the culprit; that when a criminal is condemned to death, for any crime whatever, the mode of execution should be the same whether he were peer or peasant. ”

“ Should our legislature think proper to revive the practice, in capital cases, of heading up the criminal in a barrel, filled with nails, driven inward, a sort of inverted cheval de frize, and rolling him down hill, I have often thought the more elevated corner of our Common would be an admirable spot for the commencement of the execution, were it not for interrupting the practice of coasting, during the winter; by which several innocent persons, in no way parties to the process, have been very nearly executed already. ”

“ In cases of high treason, other barbarities were practised upon the bodies of the criminals, but these were frequently,28 and in cases of persons of distinction, generally, remitted. Indeed, even the hanging was dispensed with in these latter cases; and hence we read of the execution of great prisoners of state, male and female, by beheading, which, strictly, is a manner of death unknown to the laws of England, except as an incident to the principal penalty by hanging or burning. ”

“ Since the deterrent efficacy of punishments in general, including the death penalty, is quite insignificant for the born criminals, who are insensible and improvident, the rare cases of execution will certainly not cure the disease of society. ”

“ But this we know, that if that man is executed at eight, as the clocks now stand, HE IS MURDERED, just as much as he would be, if, the evening before, he had been forcibly strangled in his cell! The felon's life is sacred until the hour arrives when justice has ordained him to die; and if the life be taken sooner, that is murder. Who, we ask, would be the responsible parties in this case, not perhaps to an earthly, but surely to a higher tribunal? On the other hand, if the execution does not take place at eight, it is highly questionable whether the criminal can be executed at all. ”

“ The lawful execution of a small number of human beings, condemned to death by a fully qualified court of justice according to the strict letter of a penal law which had previously been solemnly proclaimed, and which each one of the victims was perfectly free to avoid transgressing—to call such an execution a hundred times more abominable than the horrible act of the parents who cast their children into the flaming arms of Moloch! ”

“ You are of opinion that the justice of an execution consists, not in the extent of the sufferer's crime, or in his having merited punishment, or in the wholesome and salutary effect which that example is likely to produce upon other evil-doers, but hold that it rests solely in the robe of the judge, the height of the bench, and the voice of the doomster? ”

“ Not the least semblance of a trial, or even of examination, as a rule: the populace has taken it into its head that a certain individual is guilty of a crime, that suffices; he is sought out, torn from his family if he have one, led to the spot fixed upon for his execution, and there, without questioning or shrift, he is hanged, burned, or shot, according to the fancy of his executioners. Sometimes the criminal is in prison; but the process of the law is slow and uncertain, and the people fear that he may escape justice. ”

“ The fundamental question being thus decided for the retention of capital punishment, the mode of execution came next into discussion, and on the 3rd of June, 1791, the following article was proposed:—
"Every criminal condemned to death shall be beheaded [aura la tête tranchée] ." ”

“ There is yet another manner of killing which the Law punishes with the utmost severity, which is resisting an officer, civil or criminal, in the execution of his office (arresting a person) so that he be slain, yet though he did not produce his warrant, the offence will be adjudged murder. ”

“ Will it be believed, in this age of improved contrivances, moral and physical, that the Governor and Council of our Commonwealth have actually refused, to rush between the sentence and the execution, and save this egregious scoundrel from the gallows! They have solemnly decided, not to interfere with the operation of that ancient law of this Commonwealth, which decrees, that he, who kills his fellow man, with malice prepense, shall be hanged, by the neck, till he is dead! ”

“ It's not the least use, on the eve of an execution, to attempt to convince the gentry of the police or of the law that a man condemned to death is innocent. No. From henceforth Jacques Aubrieux belongs to the executioner. ”

“ It has been done. There is a case of a judge who sentenced a man to death and allowed the execution to take place, notwithstanding that he—the judge—had actually seen the murder committed by another man. ”

“ In an attempt to bring executions in line with our evolving standards of decency, we have adopted increasingly less painful methods of execution, and then declared previous methods barbaric and archaic. ”

“ When it was first held to be inconsistent with reason to mete out the same punishment to a highway robber who kills a traveller for his purse, and to the villain who takes away life from the author of his being, a distinction was instituted accordingly, but we can only rest in astonishment that any executioner could be found to put such a horrible law into execution as was devised to meet the requirements of the case. ”

“ In law, whether it be criminal or civil, execution always follows judgment, and someone must suffer. When you see the judge on his bench, you see through him, as clearly as if he were made of glass, the policeman to emprison, and the soldier to slay some actual living person. Such follies would make an agreeable market, wouldn’t they? ”

“ What are the natural sentiments of every person concerning the punishment of death? We may read them in the contempt and indignation with which every one looks on the executioner, who is nevertheless an innocent executor of the public will; a good citizen, who contributes to the advantage of society; the instrument of the general security within, as good soldiers are without. What then is the origin of this contradiction? Why is this sentiment of mankind indelible to the scandal of reason? ”

“ For these offenses there being danger in delay for the ordinary processes of military law, I condemn all four to death, and hereby ask for the general's confirmation of my sentence and authority to carry it to immediate execution. ”

“ They could not very well think of such punishment as a curb to more murders, for even they could not help seeing that the beheading and quartering of offenders had no such effect. The legal execution has no such effect today, a fact which any fair-minded man will recognize after proper investigation. ”

“ I have had two of these experiences, and as people should always learn by their failures, have turned them to practical account as lessons for the future. The first was the attempted execution of John Lee, which resulted in the Home Office making an investigation into the arrangements for executions in the different gaols, and eventually to their issuing an official plan for the drop, which has been used in all prisons where scaffolds have since been erected. ”

“ The management, and, if possible, the regeneration of the criminal classes, is one of the most serious tasks that civilisation has to face; and those who undertake such a task require all the light that can possibly be thrown upon the subject. The public [Pg 8] executioner has many and special opportunities of studying the criminal classes, and of knowing their attitude and feelings with regard to that capital punishment which civilisation regards as its strongest weapon in the war against crime. ”