Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1878 — The Death Penalty. [ARTICLE]

The Death Penalty.

At a meeting of the New York Medi-co-Legal Society, the other day, there was an interesting discussion on the mode of the infliction of the death penalty. Dr. John H. Packard, of Philadelphia, reasoned that just as the physical terror of punishment is increased just so much is the moral effect of the punishment weakened, as is proved by the simultaneous records in the daily press of executions end murders. He gave, among other reasons for opposing the present mode of capital punishment, that its horrors excited the humane sentiment of the community to an inordinate degree, thereby largely increasing the chances of acquittal even for the worst criminals. In Pennsylvania, he said, if the Governor goes out of office without signing the death warrant of some criminal, his successors, following the longestablisLed custom, neglect to give official sanction to the warrant, and in one notable case a man sentenced to death twenty-six years ago is’still unhung. Dr. Packard suggested that in place of the rope a more humane and decent means of life-taking be employed. His choice was the administration of carbonic oxide in a close room in which the criminal should be placed under the direction of a jury. At the end of ten minutt s fresh air should be a Imittedtothe room, and the same jury should view the body and give the necessary certificate as to death. He advocated this plan as one presenting the advantages of economy, humanity, and decency. Mr. Biddle, one of the many speakers who followed Dr. Packard, believed that it the gallows were dispensed with we should substitute something more mysterious and horrible. “Do away with the rope as a means of punishment,” he said, “but give us in place of it a terrible punishment by dead of night, in secrecy and mystery, and let the body of the felon be put so far away that even the devil cannot find it.”