DEATH CELL NIGHTMARE

Evening Star, Issue 20510, 14 June 1930, Page 1

DEATH CELL NIGHTMARE

REPRIEVE! lAN’S REPLY • WHEN HANGING IS 'WRONG. ; A Man who was sentenced to death for murder, but who was reprieved and! awarded the King’s pardon for saving th» lives of a fellow-convict and a warder, disc\ sed the. views Lord Darling expressed’: on the death penalty whan giving evidence before a special committee of the House of Commons. The reprieved man was Mr Jaincs Thomas Carlill; a fisherman, of street, Hull, who heard Mr Justice Darling;! (as he was then) pronounce the death sentence as ho, stood before him in the dock at York Assizes twenty-five years age. “ As one who has sat in the condemned cell waiting the carrying out of the extreme penalty of the law,” said Mr Carlill, “1?:: can understand the inner feelings of a man sentenced for murder. UNNECESSARY.; “ I am convinced that the man who experienced the. nightmare of a trial for': his life would have to be a maniac to " take any intentional step which ' would’ bring him back to a similar position. “It is a mistake saying ■ that a sane man who has been found guilty of murder .’ will go on murdering. I believe the. death 5 sentence is not only an extreme but an ’ unnecessary measure. “ A man who is guilty of a. brutal murder is insane when ho commits the act. “I sal certain that Mahon and other £ murderers who have expiated their crim« on the gallows Wei’s insane. The very.; methods by which they tried to conceal their crime;: reflect,od an unbalanced men-4 talily. ‘ . “Men in tins, Category should not toa hanged. They mpm* No. treated in some way which it is for the law' and mtdicai authorities to determine, BEMAEKAELE cAreiie. : ‘N There are others’wlis’-htrn found guilfy of-, liiurdi:/ and ..santS'ct } * ■ death who come into the same categp.y as myself, and should be treated in the same r way as I was treated. I believe that many :1 of them . would come out of prison and be a credit among their fellow-citizens.” 4 Mr Carlill, who is now fifty years of j age, has had a remarkable . career. Ho j parted from his wife on the'day they were?, married twenty-nine years after; the cere- V mony, never to meet again until they facctT each other in the proceedings which endeef in Mr Carlill being sentenced to three days’ imprisonment, ’at Leeds Assizes for biganwThe’judge, Mr Justice Humphreys, ; - the sentence permitted his immediate * v lease.