The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1883-02-26
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
Judge Goddards Plea for the Restora-
ton of the Death Penalty.

AOsroiabiOn Vi tuS ueatu peualtyJ auuroseeu tu
the joint standing committee on the Judiciary,
in the Hall of the House OF Representatives:
Judge Goddard, following Judge White
house, of Augusta, began by saying that the
proposition enunciated by Rev. DR.. Butler,
which SO shocked the sensbilities Of Judge
Whitehouse, that the design of human pun
ishment is not mainly reformatory, was unde-
niably true of life sentences, which imply the
hopelessness of reformation.
The spectacle of thirty or forty unrepentant
murderers undergoing perpetual imprisonment
is CHASTITY enough, but thus to incarcerate a
band of converted saints would strike most per-
sons as inhuman. He had been amazed to hear
judge of our highest criminal court publicly
announce that you must be satisfied with what
lie waa pleased to call Unreasonable protection
of human life."
"In the name of humanity, civilization and
Christianity, Judge Goddard demanded of the
Legislature for law-abding citizens protec-
ton well nigh absolute against the assassin 8
knife.
A Government unable or unwilling to grant
the highest possible protection to life and limb
was disgrace TO Christian civilization. Too
much sympathy has been wasted upon the
class which furnishes nearly all our desperate
criminals; their number is relatively insignif-
cant, but their power for evil in the State has
been frightful. Probably those enemies of So
ciety, those destroyers of their race constitute
less than one per cent even of our community.
And yet what atrocities they have perpetrated,
making Maine notorious for the peculiar fiend-
ishness of its butcheries. The history of our
legislation has not been fairly stated.
fla II limo In hoI oil
ishment for ffty-six years out of the sixty
three, we have had an honest, efficient capital
law but eighteen years, from 1920 to 1887 and
during the year 1875. During the first twenty
years of our independent existence, with an
average population of about 400, 600, we had
but two capital convictions, being at the annu-
al rate OF one to 4,000 600 inhabitants.
In 1880 the fourth year after the abolition
of the death penalty there were seven such
convictions, five of which were for murder in
the first degree, a rate OF one to SO, 900.
The relative increase of capital crime in pro-
portion to the population is 43 fold in 40 years.
This is appalling and unparalleled 10 my
researches since the worst DAYS of the Roman
Empire. Here Judge Goddard read statistics
from our own State prison in proof of his state
ments
Passing from fact to philosophy, Judge God
dard contended that capital punishment was
the most merciful as well as the most efficient
penalty for murder Efficient, because 1t is
mol only an aUSOlut0 guaranty against 1urther
butcheries by the same assassin, but because
nothing is 80 terrible as violent and disgrace
full death TO those who are candidates for the
gallows. Merciful. because it is really far less
cruel in fact than the slow EQUALIZATION of
perpetual incarceration, which DESTROYS while
it does not terrorze, because being diffused over
a lifetime it may be dissected and sub-divided,
and therefore appeals but feebly to the guilty
imagination. Wise legislators seek economy in
punishment, the greatest possible terror with
the least possible amount of real torture, and
this is exactly what the gallows affords.
From 1887 to 1875, a period of 2S years, our
equivocal law, while it threatened death, yet
like the ancient serpent that typifed the arch
enemy OF man, whispered with fatal effort eye
shall not surely die.
AS soon as this whisper was heard by the
criminal class in 1876, when Thorn escaped the
punishment of his crime, the deadly fruit began
to appear in the rapidly increasing frequency
of murder, which an occasional execution in
1854, 1869 and 1876 failed to check, until the
final abolition of the death penalty in 1876
hood-gates of crime. Besides, If we do no; re-
store the gallows, common prudence demands
the reduction of the punishment for robbery
and several other crimes now punishable with
perpetual imprisonment, for since 1876 the
Legislature has actually been offering pre-
MUM for murder This was one of the many
weighty arguments which defeated the aboli-
tion of capital punishment in England few
years ago. But many of the advocates of life
imprisonment are. evidently insincere, for
when, as in the case of Thorn, they have Sc
cured immunity from the gallows, they then
demand the murderer's pardon, and so the as
sassin at last goes free from all punishment.
One of the most persistent opponents of cap
ital punishment in this State county, whom
by the way,I see here today and presume is to
address you, a reverend doctor of divinity, was
active in that proceeding. One of his fellow
opponents of the death penalty, conspicuous
member of the same denomination. refused to
recommend Thorn IS pardon and told his cham
pion that he was dealing fatal blow at the
principle which they both advocated, while
another, Universalist and an opponent of
capital punishment both by education and
profession, man without a superior in Maine
for ability, integrity, judgment, reputation
and legal learning told me, that, after such an
exhibition of inconsistency on the part of so
many of this protested advocates of Ii e i'm
prisonment, he forever relinquished his opposi-
ton to the gallows, for while be did not change
his principles or his 'heories, he had become
convinced that their application was in this
community impracticable. 1 refer the gentle
man to Hon. Nathan Webb of Portland,
Judge of the United States District Court.
The advocates of the death penalty are
branded as revengeful and unchristian. Was
there ever grosser misuse and perversion of
language?
What is revenge but spirit of personal
malice andawhat element of personal malice
can there be in the righteous Indignation and
sense of stern justice with which we execrate
murder inflicted upon an innocent and I'M
protected stranger? I am no divine or thee
Logan, but l defy any OF those present to
poll me to a syllable of scripture that by
any fair Interpretation condemns the death
penalty, or discriminates between the gallows
and life imprisonment. Search the Hebrew or
the Christian scriptures from the primal denun-
citation of death to the murderer issued to Noah
when he emerged from the ark, down to the
declaration of st. Paul that the ruler beareth
not the sword in vain but is "revenger'' or
dained OF God, to execute wrath upon him
who doeth evil and where in the language
of Moses, that greatest of all laws ivers,
or either of the prophets or the Saw
Jour, or of any Of his apostles, can be
found a single text which can be tortured
into rebuke of the death penalty
which is not under the same
Interpretation a condemnation of life imprison-
ment and indeed of all punishment. Passing
from precept to example, see st. Peter by
divine authority inhicting instantaneous death
on man and his wife not for murder but for
lying, and this death sentence was passed not
by Hebrew prophet or judge under the old
dispensation and in the dawn of history but in
the full blaze of Christianity, in the name Of
his Master, and by that chief Apostle who had
been assured by Christ himself. "Thou art
Peter, and on this rock will build my church
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it."
But the opponents of the death penalty come
too late; by their own action they are forever es-
topped A year ago they missed golden OPP
portunity to prove their courage and tho hon
esty of their professions.
Last fall at the instigation OF the editor of
the Gospel Banner, his denomination at its an
nual convention adopted resolution condemn
ing capital punishment
But in the early summer the State conven-
ton had held its annual session at Augusta
and left Guiteau to his fate.
Here was man of doubtful sanity about to
be hung for political murder, perpetrated by
stranger under no circumstances of special
atrocity. But that man was the President of
the United States and so 'sihe great command
ment o'erswayed the order" land that convention
was as dumb as the heather oracles after the
Saviour IS BIRTH Gentlemen whose s, m pathies
gush freely over the sorrows of q Merrill have
tear TO shed over Guiteau. And yet, exc
cradle as was his crime and righteous as was
his doom. who would hesitate to say that il
driven in imagination to the dire alternative
OF the murder of President IL broad day, or
the assassination, mincing and broiling of ones
own mother, he would decline the latter alter
native?
An efficient and resrected capital law is the
only safeguard against lynchlng, as the history
ct our own county Of Aroostook has demons
trated.
Such is the instinct of Justice implanted by
God In the human breast in all ages and among
all nations, Jour opponents miscall il reveDge)
that society, when unprotected by adequate
penalties, at last reverts to its primal sever