The record-union., 1891-12-16
Weather Forecast.
AN UNFORTUNATE BLUNDER.

The last Legislature passed an Act re-
quiring the execution of criminals con-
demned to death to take place in one Of
the State Prisons. The wisdom of this
law no sensible person has ever ques-
toned. A few idiotic objections were
raised to the bill while it was pending,
but they came from men who ought to
have been ashamed Of the propositions
they advanced, but which unquestionably
will now be renewed. Executions at
county seats are bad in every respect,
people. They demoralize the public
pulse; they stimulate morbid tastes; they
rob the execution of the terror it should
inspire in evil-doers; they operate most
injuriously upon youth; they enable
sickly sentimental women to make
heroes of the condemned and convert the
County Jails into melodramatic stages.
They moreover give the sensational
press-which has sins to answer for that
eternity will not afford time enough TO
neutrality-suspicious. to cater to de-
praved appetites for the CHASTITY and
bloody; they make the solemn Office of
the law farce and defeat the very ends
that the infliction of the death penalty is
intended to accomplish.
Unfortunately for the people the late
1,nriS1ot,1ra 1yIS IO+o
work, and which has gone down in his
tory on the side of discredit to the COM
monwealth, bungled in passing the Act,
and the Supreme Court has thus been
compelled to declare it unconstitutional.
This is because the Legislature failed to
put into the law saving clause reserving
from its operation criminals convicted of
crimes committed prior to the passage of
the Act. That is to say, as the new law
changed the punishment in capital
offenses to Imprisonment in the State
Prison for ninety days before execution,
from sixty days in the County Jail, it is
ex post facto legislation as to all persons
convicted of crimes committed before the
passage of the law, and hence unconstitu-
tional.
But as it cannot be presumed that the
Legislature intended to pass an unconsti-
tutional law, which, by repeating the old
law, would allow crimes committed be-
fore the passage of the new law to go un-
punished, the court is compelled to hold
that the new law is imperative, and that
the old one, therefore, remains in force
OF course this error in the law can be
corrected by the next Legislature, when,
it is to be hoped, that there will be so
much less politics to engage the minds of
legislators that their judiciary committees
will be able to steer clear ofthe unpardon-
able blunder of attempting to make an
er post facto law. We undertake to say,
and every fairly-read lawyer will con-
cur, that the error pointed out by the
Supreme Court is one no judiciary COM
mittee fit to serve in that capacity is ex-
cusable for not discovering. 1t is, in
deed, one of the plainest and simplest
rules, understood by all law-makers who
are read in the principles of law, that an
Act dealing with things and activities that
have relation to the past as well as the
future, and concerning which there are
existing laws that should not be dis
turbed, must provide affirmatively that
the new Act shall not be taken to repeal
the old law as to events and actions prior
to the passage of the new law.