The Portland daily press., 1874-01-27
No Utility in Capital Punishment.

No Utility in Capital Punishment.
While the advocates of capital punishment
are Celebrating their plans for re-erecting
the gallows in Maine, it is fitting that their
opponents should prepare to rebuff their APP
peals to passion and sentiment with appeals
10 reason. We set out with the proposition
that the object sought is the protection of
society by the prevention of crime and the
reform of criminals. With those therefore
who take the sentimental view that the GRIM
inal code is established for the primary pur-
pose of vengeance-of giving criminals "what
they Deserve" we can hold no useful parley;
our standpoints are SO widely diverse as to
leave no reasonable hope of finding common
middle ground. With those who are sin
cerely seeking the best means of preventing
crirne with reason clear of the distorting in
fuencc of passion and sentiment we have
somewhat to say.
In considering the utility of capital pun
proper subjects of study. What then does
the world know about the effects of capital
punishment? Not much it must be con-
fessed. There are assertions on both sides,
but the facts are few. And in this state
OF partial uncertainty about immediate and
superficial results, il is certainly the part of
Justice to give the benefit of the doubt in re-
gard to the efficacy of that penalty to the
criminals, especially when we consider the
liability to irretrievable error of kind so
horrible that the mind shrinks from its con-
temptation, the brutalizing effect on the pub
lie mind of executions bruited abroad in all
the newspapers with all the CHASTITY details,
the Acknowledgements impossibility-of Sc
curing conviction by jury where hanging is
certain to follow, and when we consider, too,
the durability Of moral diseases under sys-
TEN now we'll developed, which prodoces far
more certain and permanent results than
any system of medical therapeutics ever
did in healing physical disorders.
Under such circumstances, nothing but
the clearest, most unmistakable necessity can
justify the infection of the death penalty and
that necessity cannot now be shown to exist
In this State. The advocates of hanging are
unable to suggest single fact showing that
the ga.lows has any influence in preventing
murder. They assume, to be sure, as result
of the practical adjustment of capital punish
ment in this State since 1885, the large num-
Der of homicides that have occurred within a
few years. But this increase of crime is not
peculiar to Maine and other states where the
gallows has been cut down. 1t has been quite
marked In those communities where not
twelvemonth ever passed without its public
execution. What the causes of this increase
are, we do not now stop to consider; it is
enough to state that they are of general ope-
ration.
So far as Maine is concerned, the facts have
a stronger tendency to show that the death
penalty promotes, than that it represses
crime. No marked increase in the frequency
OF homicide immediately followed the year
1885, as might be expected if the fear of the
galiows had, up to that time, kept brutal i'm
pulses in check. Other causes supervening
here, as in other States, subsequently increas-
ed the frequency of bioodshed. IF there have
been any sudden outbursts of the homicidal
mania which have seemed due to any specific
local causes, they have occurred after the oc-
casional iufliction of the extreme penalty of
tho law. On the 9Th day of February, 1869,
Clifton Harris was executed at Thomaston.
The very next year, while Gen. Chamberlain
was still Governor, and while he still firmly
persisted in his determination to fulfill what
he conceived to be his duty in ordering the
execution of persons condemned by the courts
eight deaths were proved" according to the
Advertiser 10 have been caused ''by the hand
OF violence" We do not undertake to saw
that there was certainly any connection be-
tween the spectacle of strangling Clifton Har-
rs and the morbid state of feeling widely en-
gendered by the publicity given to the details
of his execution, and the peculiar blackness
OF the next years criminal record. But we
do say that the sequence of these facts at
least estops the advocates of the death
penalty from claiming for it any ef-
fcisncy in checking homicide. Again the
greater part of the homicdes committed
during the year that has just passed, i'm
mediatel5 followed the act of the self-consti-
tuted indicators of the majesty of the law
who hung Cullen near Presqre Isle. At the
very moment when the State was Resembling
with the exploit OF the Aroostook avengers OF
blood and with the approving acciamations Of
the advocates of capital punishment, at the
moment when it seemed as if popular senti-
ment was about to tolerate the informal exc
cution of every suspected murderer by the
neighbois of the victim, murders occurred in
more rapid succession than at any other time
during the year. Here again we do not claim
that the semi-legal and the wholly unauthor-
lied murders have the relation of cause and
effect. We only say, as before, that such
theory receives much more countenance from
the facts than that of our opponents.
1t is Of considerable Importance in de.
terrnining whether the abolition of capital
punishment has contributed to the increase of
homicide in Maine to observe that this in
crease has no more than kept even pace with
that of other offences, the penalties for which
have not been sensibly amelorated. The gal-
lows cannot be alleged to have had any direct
lnnuehce in-respect to larceny, burglary and
forgery, yet we believe that the per cent of
increase OF these crimes has been as great as
Is claimed for murder How shall ,va oc-
count for this fact on sny other hypotbesis |
than that the increase is due in both casoo 70
causes CT general operation, such as the do
moralization of war, the increase of imm;ara
ton and the introduction of manufac.,1res
with the aggregation of large numbers of for |
sign operatives who lack intelligence and