DEATH PENALTY IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26030, 6 February 1950, Page 7

DEATH PENALTY IN BRITAIN

REPORT TO ROYAL COMMISSION

VIEW OF MEDICAL ASSOCIATION LONDON, February 3. Gassing was probably the most effective and humane method that could be adopted in place of hanging, although it had “highly unpleasant historical associations,” said a memorandum submitted to-day to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment by the council of the British Medical Association. The council made these five other main points in its memorandum:— (1) That no doctor should be asked to take part in executing a convicted murderer. (2) Hanging was probably as sueedy and certain as any other method of execution. (3) If practicable, the injection of a lethal dose of a narcotic drug would be speedy and merciful. (4) The McNaghton rules dealing with the mental condition of an accused person required revision and extension. ♦ (5) When a mentally abnormal person was charged with murder a plea of “guilty with diminished responsibility” should be admissible. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. G. F. Fisher) said in a memorandum to the commission that only about 50 per cent, of those upon whom sentence of death was passed suffered that penalty. “The other 50 per cent, are, for very proper reasons, reprieved, but it is a very grave thing that the solemn formula of the death sentence should, aljnost as often as not, be followed by a reprieve which cancels it,” stated the Archbishop. , “It is intolerable that this solemn ' and deeply significant procedure should be enacted again and again when, in almost half the cases, the consequences will not follow.” The Archbishop stated that it was right that a loophole should be left by which a miscarriage of justice might be averted, but if the solemn act was to remain it must normally mean what it said, and carry the consequences which it imposed. Otherwise, it was reduced to a mere empty formula which was a degradation of the majesty of the law and dangerous to society.

The Archbishop stated that he did npt think a judge should have the discretion to give sentences other than death.. The right solution would be to let the jury decide whether a case was one of plain murder without any way out of the death sentence except a reprieve, or a case in which the jury, although considering it as murder. did not think it one deserving the severest penalty. It would be a mistake to remove “mercy killings” from the category of murder and call them something else, said the Archbishop.