Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1923-05-31
Shall We Kill?

4 Il
l had been waging newspaper cam
paign to abolish hanging in favor of
some less brutal and brutalizing form
Of capital punishment, such as cleo
trocution or the lethal cell.
But standing within few feet of
the gallows when the trap was sprung,
felt no more revulsion than l would
have before an electric chair as the
current was turned on. Death was in
Simultaneous from the seven-foot drop,
although the heart reflexes continued
/ for some Is minutes before prison doc
| tors officially announced the death.
There was not so much as the witch
ing of finger by the condemned man.
Prison authorities told me this was
| typical of most hangings.
The details of the crime for which
Orrie Cross was hanged are unimport
ant, save as they are characteristic of
| juvenile crime the country over, es-
pecialIy since the war, and as they
raise the questions of society's joint
responsibility and of the justification
of capital punishment in general
Orrie Cross barely out of his teens
when he committed murder, was born
| in little Iowa town, of parents who
were not defective morally, mentally
or physically, as far as the record
shows. They were just average mid
western ruralities, reaching neither
the heights nor depths of responsible
citizenship. At an early age he was
left an orphan, and like Topsy, just
growed," receiving little attention or
schooling and getting his education"
chiefly in the usual loafing places OF
the average country town. He wasn't
inherently bad boy'-just weak and
rather worthless, like hundreds of
thousands of other boys hanging
around temp bars and pool rooms all
over this broad land of ours right this
minute.
Then he drifted to Des Moines and
fell in with Eugene Weeks, recently
discharged from the army, with good
record as a fighting man, but a much
poorer one so far as routine military
discipline was concerned. Weeks had
much the stronger mind of the two.
It was he who planned the robbery of
George Fosdick, substantial Des
Moines grocer. He gave Cross the gun
which killed Fosdicks while the latter's
daughter pleaded with the youthful
bandits not to shoot her father any
more, as he lay wounded at his door
step. But Cross fired time after time
in the panic of the panic of fear which
police officers say is characteristic of
the modern youthful criminal, especial
ly when full of dope.
Weeks common-law wife betrayed
the two for the reward. Both confess
ed, though later repudiating their con-
fessions at the instigation of their at
torneys. Both were found guilty and
sentenced to hang by the most merci-
full judge on the bench, who is also
Judge of the juvenile court. Weeks
was hanged some time before Cross,
going to his death with the bravado
which criminals love dramatically pro-
claiming his innocence and that of
Cross from the gallows Cross, far the
weaker of the two, who prison Off
Gals predicted would have to be car
ried to the scaffold, faced death calm
ly, asserting that he had made his
peace with God. He refused to discuss
his guilt or innocence, but when ask
ed him at the last moment if he had
any word to send to the young people
Of the nation, he said: "Tell them not
to let themselves be influenced by bad
companions which / took as con-
fession of his own part as well as that
of Weeks in the crime.
An unsuccessful eleventh-hour eff
fort, Endorsed by the trial Judge, was
made to save Cross on the grounds
that he had the mentality of boy of
(which is about the average of
drafted soldiers as shown by the army
tests. But regardless of Binet tests
and technical opinions, the fact is
that Orrie Cross had as much intelli-
gence and ability to discriminate be-
tween right and wrong as those same
hundreds of thousands of other boys,
previously referred to, loafing to temp
bars and pool rooms throughout the
country at this moment.
That is the sordid setting in the
case of State VS.. Orrie Cross-or
should it have been Orrie Cross VS..
State? 1t leads to the question of
whether our old theories of moral re-
sponsibility for crime are not often
wrong Should society permit boys
who are weak-whether because of
heredity, or environment, or both,
will not quarrel with Mr.. Lothrop
Stoddard-to develop logically into
desperate criminals and then infl ct
the death penalty on them for it, while
you and |, Mr.. and Mrs. responsibility
thank God our children are not as
others children are?