The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-04-16 00:00:00

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SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 1870.

THE HOME SECRETARY AND
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

The Home Secretary has perhaps as arduous
duties as any member of the Government, but
devotion to the responsibilities of the position
and determined work can accomplish all that
has to be done. In one respect, however, suc-
cessive Home Secretaries must feel that a res-
ponsibility is thrown upon them which no one
man ought to have. We allude to the Home
Office being virtually constituted a Court of
Criminal Appeal. Our criminal jurisprudence
is certainly not complete without sach a court.
It is a great anomaly that in civil cases, involv-
ing questions of property or of personal claims,
there should be an appeal to the House of
Lords, but that in cases of life and death there
should be no such appeal. The Secretary of
State assumes this position, or rather it is thrust
upon him as one of the contingencies of his
office, but beyond doubt no one holding this
position does so voluntarily. The responsibility
is too great for one man, however conscientious
and however well informed he may be with re-
gard to the painful facts which from time to
time are placed before him.
Mr. Bruce has had a great deal to contend
against in regard to the dread penalty of death
since he came into office. His decisions have
been called into question perhaps More than
those of any previous Home Secretary. On the
justice of these decisions we will not enter, but
we may retuara that the Home Secretary's vex.
diets, we believe, have been disputed, rather
owing to the growing feeling that his jurisdie.
lion is anomalous and uncertain, thau on any
special doubt of his desire to do justice or of
the soundness of his judgment. The last case
which has given rise to argument is that of Rut-
terford, sentenced to death for as cruel and de-
liberate a murder as was perhaps ever perpetra-
ted. A very curious question arose with regard ,
to this convict. He had been SO severely burnt '
du his youth that his head was in one part so
joined to his body that in that part he really
had no neck. Now he was sentenced "to be
hanged by the neck till he was dead.- Objec-
tion was taken that this could not be done with-
out indicting prolonged suffering which was
never contemplated, and the possibility of not
being able to kill the man at all in this way was
doubted. After numerous examinations and
consultations it was decided that at any rate
awfully prolonged suffering would result, and as
our law permits of no other way of judicially
putting a man to death Mr. Bruce has reprieved
the convict, who will he subjected to penal ser-
vitude for tile. Now this is certainly SO extra-
ordinary reason for saving a man's life who is
judicially condemned to die. It may lie a very
good reason for not hanging him if were to be
tender of the feeling of is condemned criminal,
but it certainly is not a good reason for sparing
his life as viewed relatively to other criminals,
who may he said to have been executed because
they hail net any malformation of the neck.
The whole case, in fact, adds another to the
many anomalies and contradictions of death by
the law. We sentence all murderers to death,
but eomparatively few are executed. Women,
as a rule, are never hanged, though there are at
rare intervals some exceptions; but why one
sex should be spared more than the other no one
can say. Some men are spared simply because
agitation is got up for their reprieve, while others
are executed because they have no friends; and
now we have a man reprieved not on any moral
grounds, not for anything whatever connected
with his crime, but simply owing to an accident
producing physical malformation. The case of
Itutterford is without parallel, and is scarcely
likely to prove a precedent, but it increases the
s n and arbitrary tnicertainties of Home
06.'0 piris Hello'', and indirectly it will on
nitwit towarile relicviag the HOMO Secretary of
duties that he never • aglit to have to perform,
and towards the formatien of a properly consti-
tuted Court of Criminal Appeal.