Capital punishment
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- Capital punishment
- Language
- English
- Source
- Volume XIX (Issue No. 2) February 1967
- Year
- 1967
- Subject
- Capital punishment
- Electrocution
- Rights
-
- Abstract
- On the 17th of February, 1967, three Filipinos were electrocuted in the national prison in Muntinlupa for the crime of murder they committed some years ago. The President of the Philippines had refused to commute the penalty to life imprisonment.
- Fulltext
- ■ On the 17th of February, 1967, three Fii.pinos were electrocuted in the national prison in Montinlupa for the crime of murder they committed some years ago. The President of the Philippines had refused to commute the penalty to life im prisonment. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT In the final hours of the eight-year administration of Governor Edmund G. Brown of California, a dramatic and provocative issue that has seemed to haunt his career flared up again — the death penalty. On December 28, 1966, Brown commuted the death sentences of four of the sixty-four men being held in California on Death Row. This is the longest roster of men marked to die in any state and, as far as we can learn, in any civilized coun try. What invests the list with special poignancy is the fact that these condemned men have been accumulated over recent years — stacked up, as it were — in an ante room to the gas chamber while California has gone four years without an execu tion. Now a new governor is in office who supports capital punishment. Ronald Reagan has said; “We have to re orient our thinking about our soft attitude toward crime ... I believe in ca pital punishment. . . . While all of us are disturbed by it, I believe it is a deterrent.” Reagan’s position is at odds with current trends in America’s system of justice. In most states the death pe nalty, which has been aban doned in many democratic countries of Europe, has been abolished or is under attack. There are now thir teen “abolitionist” states. The first was Michigan, back in 1847, and Senator Philip A. Hart from that state' has proposed a Federal abolition bill. Although in the nation as a whole more than 350 men are under sentence of death and awaiting execu tion, only one had been exe cuted in 1966 up to Decem ber 1, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons’ records. 28 Panorama In 1965, seven were executed; in 1964, fifteen; in 1963, twenty-one; in 1962, forty. seven. It is strange that capital punishment has not inspired any great debate while it has been steadily falling into dis use. True, opinion, has shiftech/In 1953, the^&allup Poll f found Americans' sixty-eight ' per cent in favor of capital punishment, but last year only forty-two per cent still favored it. The trial courts | seem to ignore the trend, for Bthe sentence continues to be imposed, even where the final step is not carried out. How ever, a gradual decline in the imposition of capital pun'ishment is also evident. In 1961, 136 were sentenced to die. Last year the total was only sixty-seven. - ■ What , accounts for the change is not gubernatorial intervention but judicial de cision. Recent Supreme Court decisions have stressed the rights of persons accused of crime, allowing a great many to win new trials. It is not some esoteric game of law-making or opinion making that has jammed the - gears in the old system of a a life for a ijfe” to which this country Was accustomed Its value as simply no While disuntil the past few years. /The change has clearly arisen from the persuasion that the •’ death penalty no longer has a necessary or even a tolera ble role in the modern con cept of justice, a deterrent is longer credible, trict attorneys and police dis-. J . pute the point, criminologists ✓ " ?* insist that fear^Sf death does not deter men from crime any more than it used to deter pickpocket^ from working the crowds at public K hangings in the days when pickpockets themselves paid for the crime or) the gallows. On March 1, i960, Brown made a statement spe cial session of the legislature that put the matter clearly^x^ in focus: “The naked, sim- | pie fact is that the death penalty has been a gross fail- • 1 ure. Beyond its jiorror and W incivility it has neither pro tected tne innocent nor de terred the wicked. The re current spectacle of publicly sanctioned killing has cheap ened human life and digriity without the redeeming grace (l which comes from justice meted out swiftly, evenly, hu manely.” Brown said that the penalty is “too random, too irregular, too unpredictaFebruary 1&67 29 ■■' What they are saying in San Quintin these days is that the public would never tole rate sixty executions, but one or two may have to take ble and too tardy to be de fended as an effective warn ing to wrong-doers.” It would be dismaying if California, which has set the pace for modern penology place before the penalty bea c . comes an object of passion ate controversy. — The Re. in America for the past gen eration, should now revert to vengeance and retribution porter, Jan. 1967. its system of justice. BOOKS '‘Books are the instruments for perpetuating the dy of knowledge painfully and slowly accumulated through the ages of man. They are also the means of preserving and sustaining the solid foundations of culture and learning. They provide the record of man’s progress and the point of departure for steps into the future. Through them the cultural resources of mankind become the birthright of the generations to come.” — By Carl R. Woodward, President of the University of Rhode Island. 30 , Panorama
- pages
- 28-30