ONE MURDER A DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 16, 18 January 1913, Page 15

ONE MURDER A DAY.

NEW YORK'S GRIM RECORD I FOE A MOMTH. Writing from Washington, the correspondent of the "Morning Post" says that murder and crimes of violence have in- ' creased enormously in the United States : durmg the last few years. The small ; cities keep pace with those of the first : class. Statistics were recently compiled or the homicide record of thirty American cities, and in only four was the percentage ' in 1911 lower than it was in the decade from 1901 to 1910, and in those four cities the decrease was a fraction of 1 ' per cent. In New York during last July there Was one murder a day. In Chicago there has been an average of iy3 homicides a year for the last five years; last year there were 221. The coroner compares Chicago with London, which, with a population three times as great, had in the same year thirty-three homicides. If there were as many murders committed in London as in Chicago, based on population, there would have been 700 homicides in London instead of thirty-three. Commenting on these figures, "the "New York Evening Post" remarks: "All this is of quite as much interest here in New York as it is in the Western Metropolis, for our own homicide rate compares quite as disgracefully with that of London as I does the Chicago record. These are not', pleasant things to say, but the facts must I be brought homo to the public knowledge I and conscience if there is to be any hope of improvement." LAW SLOW AND UNCERTAIN. In New York last year 148 murders were committed and 125 persons were arrested charged with the crime, yet the startling thing is that only thirteen per-| sons had been convicted at the end of the year, and not one of them had been puti to death. Perhaps this mere statement j explains better than anything else why | murder is so common in the United States. Criminologists are agreed that the greatest deterrent to crime i 3 the swift and certain vengeance of the law. Murder committed in the heat of. passion there will always be, but murder committed deliberately, when the criminal balances his chances of being able to escape the Courts, is encouraged when the law is slow and uncertain.

The law in America, the criminal branch, is a gamble with the odds against society and in favour of the criminal. In the course of every twelve months a good many murderers are executed in the United States, but an even larger number escape their just deserts; and those who pay the penalty are given plenty of time in which to make their peace.

In New York not long ago a youth was electrocuted (the electric chair has been substituted for the hangman's noose in that Staie) for a particularly atrocious crime. Poor and almost friendless, yet twenty-two months elapsed between his conviction and death. There was not a shadow of doubt of his guilt, and there was not a single mitigating circumstance, vet his lawyers were able to drag tbe case on appeal from court to court for more than two years.