FLOGGING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 193, 16 August 1941, Page 6

FLOGGING

As a humanitarian permit me to have a few words with Messrs. Henry Hay ward and C. R. McDonald. Taking the records of murders committed in this country, there hare been cases where a recommendation to the mercy of the Court has been submitted and approved in the past • —yes. and under anti-Labour Governments, too —where it has been established that there was some point in the culprit's favour. But Smith battered to death an aged,

decrepit old country storekeeper t rob him in an almost uninhabite part of Western Canterbury where hi stood a hundrcd-to-one chance of get ting away with it. A wave of stupi( sentimentality prevails and the deatl sentence is "reprieved. Result, thi man becomes the star actor in an other most brutal assault—this tinu on a warder—and for some consider able time was at large again. Th( honour and wisdom of a learned anc experienced member of the Bar anc Bench, in sentencing him as he .did is over-ruled and even insulted bj our Government, again actuated bj sentiment carried to a point of fatu ous farce. Mr. Hayward's reference to the dark ages in England—though only a few decades ago—has hardly any analogy with these two appalling cases. Mr. Hayward says the highest purpose of the law is hot vengeance but reformation. Ah! but how about those moral imbeciles who are beyond reformation? Much on the same lines is C. R. McDonald. Statistics again! They prove that harsh punishment does not deter. Well, is sloppy sentiment any more effective? J. ORR.