Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/437

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 423

tion of the advocates of commutation to life-imprisonment, as ' tempting the gov- ernor to flinch from his duty,' seems greatly to belittle the sacredness and solemnity of their appeal. The constitution has made the governor the supreme arbiter in this matter of life and death. I know no reason why those who present arguments to show why the supreme judge should commute a sentence in a capital case should be described as tempting the governor to flinch from his duty, any more than the probation officer who asks of a judge suspension of sentence in a case of petit larceny should be regarded as tempting a judge to betray his trust, and let loose thieves on the community.

Dr. White's letter shows a regrettable distrust of one of the great prerogatives which the people have placed in the governor's hands ; but I venture to say that no appeal for the return to retaliatory and barbaric punishments will ever induce the people of this state to withdraw it from the chief executive or from some other honored and trusted depositary. Day before yesterday the statement was given out authoritatively from the executive chamber and published in the New York Sun, that you had decided to commute the sentence of the three brothers. Let me assure you that this announcement was not regarded by the great majority of the people of this state as any ' weak or demagogical or whimsical use of the pardoning power,' as Dr. White characterizes the action of certain governors in sister states, but as a solemn, wise, and humane exercise of one of your highest constitutional privileges. It seemed to many citizens that, as three young men were condemned to be executed for the murder of one person, even those who maintain the principle of retaliation might view without alarm commutation of the sentence of the youngest of these, who was but twenty years of age at the time of his unfortunate participation in this terrible act.

" It is a matter of scientific demonstration that the introduction of the prin- ciple oi mercy into the criminal law of this and of foreign countries has been followed by the most remarkable results ; not, as might be assumed from Dr. White'* letter, in the direction of an increase or repetition of the number of offenses, but in the direction of their decrease ; so that neither the individual nor the state has suffered from its wise exercise. Dr. White may well be chal- lenged to show whether in states like Maine, Michigan, Rhode Island, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and others, the formal or practical substitution of life imprison- ment for the death sentence has been followed by a carnival of murder and crime.

" In one respect I am in cordial agreement with my friend, and that is that mistaken leniency must not be substituted for discipline which is corrective and reformatory. No one believes more thoroughly than myself in penological surgery. It seems to me, however, a fatal mistake for the state to wait until a young man has committed a capital crime, and then to apply this surgery in the electric chair, when the victim can have no benefit from the operation except that which may come from translation into another state of existence. The history of these three young men as retailed to me by a lady who knew them in the town in which they lived, shows that, though they had not committed felonies, they had followed a wild and lawless course of life, and that no adequate steps were taken by the state whose laws they had violated to check them in their unlicensed career until they were doomed to extermination for the commission of a murder. To some of us who believe iri the responsibility of a state, the gravest question that confronts us is not where the responsibility of the state ends in this matter, but just where it began. For several years the State Commission of Prisons and the Prison Asso- ciation of New York have appealed to the legislature to establish a reformatory for misdemeanants to which precisely such wild young marauders as these could be committed ; but while the legislature is willing to make ample appropriations for good roads for purposes of intercourse throughout the state, it has not yet been willing to build another moral highway along which, on the pathway of dis- cipline and education, youthful misdemeanants of this state may find some other destiny than the electric chair. If the lives and fate of these three young men shall serve to awaken the sense of responsibility of the legislators of this state to extend and develop the reformatory systems for youthful misdemeanants, their lurid crime will have been transmuted into some moral significance.