The Death Penalty

( Originally Published 1908 )

HONG the pleasant duties of the President of France is that of signing all death warrants issued in the Republic.

This is well. President Fallieres says, however, that there should be a slight change in the arrangement, to-wit: The judge who sentences the man to die, should also act as his executioner. President Fallieres knows full well that if this were the case it would do away with legalized homicide. He says, "I will not ask another man to do that which I myself am unwilling to do. I will do no murder—even for the State."

Therefore, President Fallieres is commuting all death penalties to life imprisonment, and where there is a ghost of doubt about the man's guilt, he pardons him. He says, "France must learn to take care of her criminals without killing them. It's a poor use to make of a man—to take his life—it is an acknowledgment of our inefficiency. Even a life sentence should hold out to the man the promise that twenty years of good behavior and useful work will make him free. Penology must be made a science to the end that when we imprison a man we do it for his own good, with the intent of turning out a better man than we took in. Just as long as the State sets an example of killing its enemies, individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

Two hundred years ago when England had forty-six offenses punishable by death there was very much more crime than now. Crime has decreased as laws have become more humane.

There is no such thing as a criminal class.

Murder exists first in the heart; and it often exists in the hearts of very good people. When the State ceases to breed murder in the minds of her citizens, they will cease not only the killing of each other, but the desire to kill.

Judicial murders are worse than those done in passion—they are so atrociously premeditated, so deliberately planned. No excuse can be made for them, beyond precedent.

The sentiments of the people are opposed to this legal killing business, and this is why so many murder trials turn themselves into a farce.

When there is to be an electrocution everybody tries to get out of the job, and the deadly current is always turned on by a man at a distance from the scene, who salves his conscience by pretending to think he is turning on the lights, and in many cases the executioner is a convict, working under orders.

President Fallieres' refusal to either act as an executioner, or to order others to take human life, is a manifestation of the Better Spirit of the Age.

Now let enlightened America by her judges and governors do the same. Our President and every Governor of every state is a negative party to these judicial killings. They know what is being done and by lifting a finger they can stop it,just as President Fallieres has done. Let them commute every death sentence to imprisonment for life, all without argument or question and they will thereby express the Spirit of the Times, and Father Antic, the Law, who always lags behind, will manicure his claws.