Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1907 — Governor Wrong On The Hanging Proposition. [ARTICLE]

Governor Wrong On The Hanging Proposition.

Practically all of Governor Hanly’s recommendations to the Legislature are wise and practical and all of them are well meant, but in one of them he followed his sentiment rather than his judgment and his recommendation is far from wise or practical. Ht takes the view that life is something so sacred that the law has no right to take it. Even for instance in a case like that of Edward lionahu, the desperate murderer whom he saved from hanging by commuting hiis sentence. This man whose life is so sacred iq the Governor’s sight, sees no sacred ness in other men's lives and ruth lessly took one that is known of for the few dollars the man's horse and watch would bring, and pro bably took others that were not known of, and who was ready and anxious to take any number of lives to save himself from the punishment his crimes deserved. And who, further, if by any means he should again secure his freedom would be just as ready again to take other lives to retain that freedom. Moreover, if the law has no -right to take a man’s life to punish and repress crime, it has no right to take his liberty and especially not to incarcerate him in a tuberculosis infected prison where he has about nine chances but of ten of dying by inches within ten years, because of such imprisonment. The Governor says taking life for crime does not diminish crime but increase its. Never was a falser idea given circulation by a clearer headed man. In this country where not one murderer in 20 is executed for his crime, the chance of

the d* ath penalty is too slight to repress murder, but in countries like England, for instance, where trials, convictions and executions, follow swiftly and surely on the commission of the crime, there are not one fifth the mart' < in proportion to thepopul.it there are in this country. Ask .e old residents of Lafayette, Governor Hanly’s home city, if the hanging of three desperate criminal there 51 years ago, and retold elsewhere in this paper, did not have a mighty and most beneficial effect in pieventing other murders and other crimes iu that city. Ask 'the older people of San Francisco who remember the rule of the Vigilants in that citv, with their wholesale hanging of criminals, if taking the lives of criminals dUi not diminish crime in that instance. Ask the people of Seymour aud’ofull southern Indiana for that matter, if the hangifig of the Ueno gang about 40 year? ago did not dimmish crime; and t ie muchiater numerous hanging of 'desperate—and --organized criminals in Ripley county. Ask the people of northern Colorado, of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho if the wholesale hanging of murderers and outlaws by vigilantes about 35 jva is . e o 1 1 epi eased or i uertased crime. A nutnber of our states have tried abolishing the death penalty and several of them have restored it ag in. and ttw- ot them*are so' well' satisfied’with the results of-it? 1 abolishment that they reeommeud it to other states. Colorado wa< One of those states a nriiitber oi ! • culiarly heinous murders. ‘ restored it about 24 year ago, and since then the state has had 16 legal hangings. The latest of these, was on ‘he 12th of this month in the state prison at Canon City, andi the Record of that city, a most able and influential paper, says of these 16 hangings as com par d with some eastern states which have executed, no criminals in that period, that an inference that crime is more prevalent there than in other sections

of the vountry. would be wide of the mark, but on the contrary, the Colorado people are among the most law abiding and patriotic in the country. The Record then adds the f bowing paragraph; Who shall say that the expiation on the gallows for murder has not been a deter rant in the commission of that class of crime and that a capital punishment law has not had a wholesome and salutary effect upon the murals of the state? Let the laws and the practices of the courts be so reformed that wilful murderers are punished with the severity, the certainty and the celerity they are in England and most other European countries, and the results will mighty soon show how effectively the taking ot lives for crime will diminish crime. And that is the right and only effective way to cure the lynching habit, also, as we don’t mind telling our good Governor, who is, and very properlyistrongly, opposed to lynching. “My child was burned terribly about.the face, neck and chest. I applied Dr. Thomas' Electric Oil. The pain ceased aud the child sank into a restful sleep.”—Mrs. Nancy M Hanson, Hamburg, N. Y. In order to insure good bus service during my absence, please call up and leave your calls early instead of waiting until the last minute as a few ot my customers are in the habit of doing. Owing to the condition* of some of the streets it requires twice the. time to make a call as it does when the roads are in good condition. Joe Jackson.