Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1909-05-07


the administration of capital punishment
in the United States. 1t was planned to
execute all of the condemned on April
80. but the nerve of the superintendent
of the Richmond penitentiary appears TO
have forsalIen him. Governor Swanson
listened to his plea that he could not ex-
ecute more than two men in any one day
and reprieved three of the negroes, one
| until May and the other two until May
Z. One would thing that the prison Off
cial would have preferred to finish his
CHASTITY task all at once.
Virginia is the latest state to adopt
electroeution as the form of capital pun
| ishment The first was New York. Aft
ter the Empire state came Massachusetts,,
Ohio, and New Jersey. Minnesota and
other states have considered the adoption
of the electric chair. There is general
! tendency in that direction. The reason
for the substitution of electrOcution for
hanging as a means of Furnishing capital
crimes was that the new method OF In
! flicting the death penalty was supposed
to be painless and therefore more humane
! than hanging.
For years, however, there have been
many people to dispute this assertion.
! They contend that electrocution is not
painless by any means and that in fact 1t
| is most barbarous. They insist that no.
body ever dies in the electric chair, but
| that the passage of the curreHt through
| the body merely suspends the vital func-
! tions, and that the condemned are in real
| ity killed by the autopsy performed after
| the electrocution. These are questions
which may never be settled.
| sss
| 90 10 Oulv country
in which capital punishment is admins
tered by electrocution. In France the
guilIotine has been used-except for a
| short intermission-to punish capital
| crimes ever since the days of the French
/ Revolution, when DIR. Guillotine urged the
| adoption of this method. which he claimed
was painless. The French doctor borrow
| ed his idea from the Scotch maiden so
called because some debonnaire nobleman
declared facetiously, just before his head
| fell. that the knife was the sweetest mai
! den he had ever kissed.
! Recently after ten. years of idleness,
the suillotine has been called into action,
| with a prospect of beheading twenty-five
criminals within a few weeks. The res
| ponsible French officials have long been
| opposed to capital punishment but they
had to yield to the public demand that
! extraordinary steps be taken to checK
| the existing reign CT violence and crime.
| The guiIlotine began work again at Be-
thune with a quadruple execution. An
| immense crowd was present ana thous-
! ands of troops were necessary TO quell the
| riot which the legalized bloodshed hcit-
| ed. Somebody took moving pictures of
the affair. The authorities sought 10
nrevent him and later to seize the films,
| but the photographer escaped, supposedly
| RI America. At Marseilles three heads
| were to fall and other cities clamored
for the guillotine.
! Hanging is the most common form OF
execution. 1t prevails in Great Britain
| and her colonies and many other coun-
tries. In Mexico the method is shooung'
| and in Germany It is beheading. In spain
| the garrote has been used ever since the
| Moorish conquest. This method OF exc
| cution was practiced in the philippines
| ond C,uba before the Sanpish-American
| war. The garrote consists of a heavy
! metal collar attached to post. The col
lar is fastened around the criminals neck
| and a screw is turned, which pierces the
victims spinal column where It connects
/ with the brain. Death is instantaneous.
| In China the executioner wields the SWORD
| while two assistants stretch the culprlt
| neck.
| For a century there. has been genera
tendency all over the civilized world 10
| Iassen the number of capital offenses, to
/ rake the infiction of the death penalty
as humane and secret as possible ana
finally to abolish capital punishment ale
Itogether In the United States as late
as 1894 there were twenty-five capital Of
| lenses under the military code or laws
| TWENTY-FIVE under the naval code, three
under the extra-tefritorial jurisdiction OF
consuls and seventeen under the clVl
| code In the f1fty-second congress the
nupobar was reduced to three-treason.
| murder and rape. Such crimes can only
be punished under the federal law If COM
nitted in a territory or national reser-
walton. or on the sea. In 1906 virginia
| headed the list of states with eight capt.
tsl offenses, Louisiana had seven, Mis-
| souri, and Delaware each six. In most
states murder is the only capital crime.
| Other capital crimes in America are KID
naming. arson piracy, etc. In England
| a century ago there were 200 capital
crimes. so called. including such COM
narativeIy minor offenses as stealing APP
ples counterfeiting, forgery. and so on.
Now there are said to be only two, muir
der and treason.
! The wholesale executions that market
! the ancient Roman prosecutions. the
Spanish inauisition, st. Bartholomew s
dav. the French revolution and practt-
callv all the wars and insurreotion sof
many centuries have gone, 1t is to be
/ hoped. never to return. Rarely now does
an execution constitute an occasion for
public holiday, feasting and rejoicing,
as was the case in the olden days. Most
modern humanitarians, criminologists and
penologists agree that executions should
he as. private as possible. Publicity, the
keynote OF present-day life, is not applied
] to infection of the death penalty.
| There are FIVE states where capital pun
kishment does not exist-Maine, Michigan,
Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Kansas. In
! the last named state the death penalty
may be inflicted upon a warrant of the
| governor but such a warrant is neven
signed. Iowa abolished capital punish
ment' some years ago, but reenacted it
after the number of murders in the state
increased Colorado abolished the death
penalty in 1897. Shortly afterwards
there was such an outbreak Of rioting,
murders and Iynching that the law was
amended in 1891 so that a jury can in
hict either death penalty or life i'm
prisonment.
| Capital punishment is not practiced in
! Portugal, Holland, Roumania, Finland.
| T-oeto Pfca EctYadOr