Arizona republican., 1910-06-06
The Case of MaddilI

extraordinary thing, in ordering that Imprisonment for fifteen years shall be substituted for the death sen tence that was imposed upon Thomas Waddill. It does not follow, however, that in doing something extraordinary the acting governor has done some thing morally wrong. Indeed, nothing but difference to public opiRion requires an executive to give his reasons for action in such cases. for when he steps in between the courts and a sentenced convict a governor is an swerable to his own conscience only provided he acts within the auth ority conferred upon him by law.
 It is quite evident from his state ment of the case that the acting gov ernor reached his conclusions apart from the facts embodied in the court records of the triai, the conviction and sentence in the district court, and the affirmance of the conviction by the supreme court for he makes no reference to this record; and he makes it plain, in fact, that he bases his conclusions upon a statement made to him by friend who inves tigated the case. Who this friend is, and the extent and minuteness of his investigation does not appear. Tersely stated, the acting governors reasons for his action appear to be: that waddill is but a boy in years; that he grew up in remote and isolated section of the territory, with out education and under all the dis advantages which such an environ ment present; that he and his parents are ignorant. naturally; that he killed his victim in a fit of passion, hav- ing been taunted and called vile names. and that immediately after his crime he was intensely sorry for it. The proclamation also seems to imply that. because of the acting governors belief that all men who live a lonely life in the mountains become more or less insane, there may be some question of this con- victs sanity. This inference seems scarcely to be sustained by the act ing governors own logic, however. as the prisoner has failed to reach those years that are believed to bring, with solitude a failure of balance to the mind.
 We have not the record before us. and do not know whether the evidence in the trial showed any extenuating circumstances. But trial juries in Arizona have two options as to the punishment to be inflicted for first degree murder when they bring in verdict of guilty-they are empowered to say whether the convicted man shall go to the penitentiary for life, or go to the scaffold: and the fact that the death sentence is seldom imposed in this territory. whereas we have more than sixty murderers in the territorial prison who were award ed the punishment of life imprison- ment instead of death denotes that juries usually look for an excuse to award imprisonment instead of death. It is therefore a fair inference that when. as in the waddin case, the jury fixes the punishment at death, no extenuating circumstances were brought out in the trial
 But it is only fair to Acting Gov ernor Young to presume that he did not assume the grave responsibility of interfering with the finding of the jury and the courts until he was thoroughly convinced. by absolutely reliable evidence, that there was a miscarriage of justice in the penalty fixed by the jury for Waddilfs crime.
 Having decided to interfere, the ex- traordinary procedure, as already mentioned. was to fix the modified punishment at comparatively short term in prison instead of life im- prisonment But this Is a matter for executive conscience, and if the act ing governor felt-as he undoubtedly did-that it was his solemn duty to step between this prisoner and the gallows, it was his duty likewise to make such modification of the pun ishment previously fixed as would ac- cord with his notions of justice. We are inclined to guess. however, that the we'll known tenderness of heart of the Hon. George U. Young would prove an embarrassment to him were