The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1900-05-12
rs CAPITAL PUNISHMENT JUsTI
FLED.


is slowly forcing itself to the front in
| affairs of public policy, and where duly
| considered seems to merit attention OF
| thinking people.
Four years ago the state of Colorado
abolished capital punishment. The re-
suit of this Colorado legislation will,
perhaps in time, furnish data on which
to base some adequate conclusions con-
| corning the wisdom of the legislatures
| action in making this penalty of muir
der life Imprisonment. So far it can
| hardly be said that there has been suffi-
cient experience in Colorado to justify
the charge made in some quarters that
it was mistake to have abolished capi4
tai punishment.
1t is natural that in times of intense
local excitement following the commits
sion of some unusually heinous murder
the people should cry out for summary
punishment of the offender, and it is
not strange that public feeling should
take the form of an eye for an eve.
There is no doubt but that public cla-
NOR in Colorado favors a restoration
of the law of capital punishment, and
yet it is safe to say that it will not be
restored in the near future at least.
for the people of that state are pro4
gressive in all things. and will not be
swayed by popular prejudice until the
law has been proven by experience to
be a failure. The question is one that
- ,;yNR,-
and in this connection the followins
passage from an address of Dr.. E. N.
McGilvray of Cornell University is
timely:
In the extreme case of capital pun
ishment, it seems to be too much of a
heartless paradox to say that the exc
cutiou is for the criminals own good
or in order to make him good. But L
think that without the f1ippancy which
expresses itself in the proverb, only
dead Indians are good Indians, we can
truly and seriously maintain that we
kill some persons to make them good.
This end, however, is not to be realized
after their death, but before it. Apart
from any outlook upon a possible future
life-a consideration which is not per-
tinert here-the coming of the muir
derer to himself in the prospect of the
gallows, his recognition of the enormity
of his offense, not against an external
society, but against the interests of his
better self, which, if he had only seen
it, included the life and welfare of his
victim; the sad. but manly, avowal
that he has put himself by his act into
such a position that the only way to
save himself, to redeem himself to re-
establish the harmony he has so rudely
marred-not a harmony outside him
self, but his own harmony in his adj
justment to a social environment that
enters into the very constitution of his
personality-all this result, I say, and
nothing short of this result, will justify
the shedding of q murderer's blood. The
preservation of the external order may
necessitate the execution, but necessi-
tation and justification are two very
different things. Into this difference,
however, we cannot go at present.
Experience seems to teach us that
we are not speaking of what Mr. Spen-
Ger calls the straight man., an ideal
social being for we know none such,
and could not recognize him if we did
experience seems to show that the only
way in which the murderer can be
brought to himself is by the instrument
tally of the death penalty
But while all this is true, it is also
true that the callousness of a certain
class of persons toward the criminal ia
inhumane. From the time that the SEN
tence of death is passed, some men
seem to regard the convict as a person
to be brought to recognize the mean
ing of his deed and of his execution.
but as a dangerous animal kept for
slaughter. 1t is just such an attitude
that has led by reaction to the hys-
terically tender-hearted treatmen of
the criminal. Both extremes should be
avoided