Arizona sentinel and Yuma weekly examiner., 1914-10-22
SEVENTEEN MURDERERs AWAIT
 ING EXECUTION
he Arizona Republican says:

Former Governor Hanley, of Indi- ana, of the Flying Squadron" per haps unwittingly touched upon a ten der local subject in his address on prohibition on Saturday. He was at that time speaking of alcohol as a cause of crime. He said that during his administration as governor four cases of murderers condemned to die were brought before him. He was urged to exercise executive clemency. In one case the murderer had been inspired by strong drink. But for his intoxication there would have been no murder.
 Governor Hanley was moved not only by this circumstance, but he was opposed on principle to capital punish ment. He seized a pen to affix his signature to a communication of the sentence. But he did not sign it. He laid the pen down, for it suddenly came to him that it was none of his
 
 done their work, and, so far as the record before the governor disclosed, they had done it we'll They had fol lowed the law
 The law did not regard, and could not with safety to society, regard any drunkenness as a mitigating circum- stance. The governor could not do what the law could not do.
 Neither did the law hold capital punishment in the same abhorrence in which it was held by Governor Hanley and the governor could not place himself above the law or say that he was better than the law which he had taken a solemn oath to sus- tain.
 How different from the course of Governor Hanley, a man of training and education and an accomplished lawyer, has been that of Governor Hunt, who has in the case of every murderer, condemned within the last three years, placed himself above the law until now there are IT murderers under suspended sentence of death at Florence.
 The course of our governor had a single precedent in this country. That was afforded by the eccentric and un- trained Governor West of Oregon, whose views on the subject of capital punishment, while the same as those of Governor Hanley, were, like those of Governor Hunt, placed above the law. Like Governor Hunt, Governor | West went before the people and ask ed them to change the law to meet his views. They declined to do so. Meanwhile, there was an accumulation of seven murderers in the Oregon state prison. After the defeat of the anti-capital punishment measure, the governor, in a fit of spite against the people, thought to sicken them by fix ing the same date for the execution of the waiting murderers.
 Is Governor Hunt preparing for still greater and therefore more hor- rid, carnival at Florence when the bill to defeat capital punihsment has been defeated, as it certainly will be, next month? Or, will he then disregard the will of the people, as he has dis regarded the law?
 Undoubtedly it was more painful for Governor Hanley to subordinate | his long cherished personal opinion of capital punishment to the laws of Indiana than it would have been for Governor Hunt to set aside his views on the same subject, which were only incidental to a half-formed and, in part, an ill-considered program of pc nology It would have been much better for Governor Hunt and for the state of Arizona if he had followed the sensible and law-abiding course of lGo,ornor