ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
Hart, Senator Philip A.
Abolish the Death Penalty by PHILIP A. HART CAPITAL PUNISHMENT has little more effect on the rate of crime than a pebble in the Pacific Ocean has on the tide level at Seattle, A strong statement?...
...They want to know how I can possibly propose abolishing the death sentence for such horrible deeds as murder, rape, treason, and kidnapping...
...Simply because from it comes little good—and considerable injustice...
...Clinton Duffy, former warden of San Quentin Prison, spent twenty-three years asking persons waiting in death row—and others who had narrowly escaped it if they had "ever thought of the death penalty prior to the commission of their crime...
...But it is a conclusion that almost every expert supports and every statistic demands...
...Sure...
...But captured wounded—despite the John Wayne movies—are seldom stirred into action again, and likewise the life-termer, even if eventually released, is extremely unlikely to repeat his crime...
...Although we now have thirteen states which no longer permit capital punishment, we still have a large contingent of what I presume to be "upright citizens" who are outraged at my stand on this issue...
...But is it really a threat to the would-be criminal...
...Don't I read the papers...
...It is also a curious fact that nowhere in death row do we find a rich man's son or a notorious underworld figure, for they can always afford the most capable of counsel...
...And here I am, trying to take away the one threat that the good people of this land can hang over the head of the criminal who is contemplating some heinous deed...
...But there is still another side to the abolitionists' case for repeal of capital punishment...
...And yet, more murders are committed in each of those three states, leaving Michigan with the lowest murder rate...
...And in nearby Wisconsin, also an abolition state, the rate is even lower...
...of the inevitably long wait in death row while lawyers pursue appellate and collateral remedies...
...A society that executes criminals —like troops that kill enemy wounded before moving on—does perhaps derive some psychological comfort from the feeling that at least that criminal will no longer be a threat...
...Not one person answered yes...
...But statistics aside, let's consider what the criminal feels...
...The recent report of the President's Crime Commission asks: Is the death penalty system "cruel and unusual punishment"—not because of the execution but because U.S...
...For this is the main argument of those who support execution...
...That innocent people are being victimized...
...In all fairness, I have to say that perhaps the great majority of the advocates of capital punishment have never seen the statistics on crime rates and have never had the the opportunity to read psychiatric reports which conclude that some crimes are committed because the criminal is "attracted to the spectacle of his death and attempts to secure it to insure his own destruction...
...Why eliminate the death penalty...
...Otherwise, they would still be performed in public squares where all could witness the horror and tremble...
...Don't I know that crime is soaring...
...What we do find are young boys who grew up in the slums of some Northern city or an uneducated Southern Negro whose case was presented by an obscure country lawyer...
...All the evidence shows that it is not...
...Executions are no tribute to civilization...
...SENATOR PHILIP A. HART, Michigan Democrat, has introduced legislation designed to abolish the death penalty for conviction of Federal crimes...
...Is it really a deterrent...
...And yet no one proposes that we limit a condemned man's attempts to have possible errors at his trial corrected...
...For example, in Michigan, the potential murderer only has to worry about life imprisonment— while in neighboring Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana he knows that one slip-up could put him in the electric chair...
Vol. 32 • April 1968 • No. 4
