Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/154

 The Death Penalty in the United States.

129

THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED STATES. THE bill introduced by Representative one was convicted, and he was hanged, N. M. Curtis, of New York, "to re conclusive evidence of such a crime being duce the cases in which the penalty of hard to get, but public sentiment very death may be inflicted," has now become a strong. In the cases of crimes committed on law. Roughly summarized, it abolishes the the high. seas, we find the differentiation death penalty as to all crimes within the following the same lines yet more plainly; jurisdiction of the Federal courts, except for murder, there were three trials and two treason, murder, rape, and capital offenses convictions, both followed by death; for enumerated in the articles of war for army sinking a vessel at sea there was one trial, and navy; and even in murder and rape the accused being convicted but pardoned; cases a jury is permitted to qualify its while for piracy there is the remarkable verdict of guilty by adding, " without capi record of sixty-seven trials, sixty-six convic tal punishment," the penalty then being tions, and only eight executions — a con changed to life imprisonment at hard labor. trast which may be explained by the fact The report of the House Judiciary Com that most of the acts of piracy committed mittee carries an appendix, in which are in those days were phases of the slave trade, grouped the fruits of a painstaking inquiry which, though formally condemned by stat of Mr. Curtis into the state of the law con ute, were winked at by the populace, and cerning capital punishment in all civilized hence commonly pardoned. countries, from which he concludes that Coming down to very recent times, we the United States " have undoubtedly the find, in a report from the attorney general, bloodiest code in the world." that in the years 1890, 1891, and 1892, of a total of 271 persons indicted in the United The Federal statutes covering this subject may be said to have been inherited States courts for murder, only sixty-three from the English criminal code, and have were convicted, and only thirteen of the undergone little change in their century of convicts put to death. In other words, existence. They enumerated sixty offenses taking for our index the commonest of punishable by death. One of President capital offenses, and that which has pre Jackson's messages contains statistics which served in all epochs the most constant show that, during the first thirty-seven years measure of public abhorrence, we must be of the republic, conviction of a crime easily struck with the great change which had come capable of proof was not hard to obtain, over the operation of the law; for the ratio and that death was pretty sure to follow of convictions to trials had declined, in the conviction of those crimes most revolting to course of sixty-five years, from about ninety public sentiment. Thus we find that of per cent to twenty-three, while the ratio of thirty-nine persons tried for murder thirty- executions to trials had declined during the five were convicted and twenty-two hanged; same period from more than fifty-six per cent to less than four. and of nine tried for treason six were con victed and five hanged, witnesses in such It was the steadily increasing dispropor cases being presumptively abundant and tion between trials, convictions, and exe public sentiment strong. On the other cutions which convinced Mr. Curtis that hand, of four persons tried for rape only public sentiment has been undergoing a