The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1921-01-08
Hanging a Boy
I6 Years Old
7 USTICE GOULD yesterday SEN
fenced Edgar Randolph Perry
90 eighteen Nnars old 10 Ln

hanged.
Under the influence Of bootleg
liquor, this youth committed the
crime of taking a life.
The laws of this country SEN
fenced this youth to pay the penalty
with his own life.
Aside from the extenuating cir
cumstances surrounding this case,
there are dozens of good reasons
why an eighteen-year-old boy should
not be hanged in the capital of the
greatest nation of the world. We
quote from a brief submitted to the
New York Legislature by the Anti
Capital Punishment Society.
Capital punishment is a denial of
the fundamental teaching of re-
ligion and of all ethical conception
Of the duty of man to his neighbor
That prominent churchmen of all
religious sects in this country favor
the abolition of the death penalty,
is proved by the fact that such men
as Bishop Greer of the Episcopal
Church at the one extreme and
Rabbi Wise of the Free Synagogue
at the other are ardent advocates
of the abolition of capital punish
ment.
We object to capital punishment
because it is a relic of barbarism.
1t is a survival the old discarded
principle of revenge-the lex talionis
of the ancients. The most progress
sive ideas of our day are opposed
to all thought of revengeful punish
ment and only recognize the i'm
portance Of that restraint and disci-
pline which afford hope of improve
ment and better development of
ideals in the wrong-doer. This is
the underlying principle now recog-
nized by all courts, legislatures and
jurists in punishment. The one ex-
ception is in the penalty of death
the most brutal and inhuman of all.
We object to the death penalty
because it is capricious and illogical
in its application. Of every hundred
men charged before the grand jury
of New York county with homicide,
six go to the death chair; thirty are
not indicted; eighteen are dis
charged; fourteen are acquitted by
the juries; and thirty-two are al
lowed to plead to a minor offence
or are convicted by juries of minor
offences. If you compare this with
the fact that out of every hundred
men charged with all other felonies
in New York county, ninety are con-
victed, you will see that, whereas
man charged with felony has
nine chances to one against escaping
the allotted punishment for his mis-
deed, a man who commits murder
has seventeen chances to one in
favor of escaping the death penalty,
which the law has allotted for his
crime.
We object to capital punishment
because it is brutalizing in its effect
upon the minds Of the people.
There are ten States in our Union
in which capital punishment has
been abolished.
We object to capital punishment
because it is not deterrent. 1t has
been remarked that the number Of
given homicides to given number
of the population varies very slight
ly from year to year. An inspection
of the tabulated statistics for the
last ten years supplied in the re-
ports of the District Attorney of
the County of New York shows this
to be true of our city as it has been
asserted to be true of all commu-
mites. Assault" is for instance, a
very common crime; the number of
charges for assault vary from CAT
in 1904, to 1,139 in 1911. In burg