PEERS REJECT COMPROMISE ON HANGINGS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22696, 22 July 1948, Page 5

PEERS REJECT COMPROMISE ON HANGINGS

LONDON, July 20. The House of Lords, by 99 votes to 19, rejected the Government’s compromise clause on the death penalty for murder, stipulating hanging for various types of murder and imprisonment for others.

Political quarterse expect that the Government may drop the clause and introduce it at another session as a separate bill. This would prevent the holding up of the present bill which all

parties agree contains many valuable judicial reforms. The Opposition leader, Lord Salisbury, said that the Government’s proposal could only result in the grossest disequilibrium of penalties for murder.

Lord Goddard, Lord Chief Justice, said the Government’s proposal would reduce the law of Britain to a laughing stock.

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Jowitt, said the proposal might not have been well drafted but it was a real effort to end what might become a great public misfortune by the continuance of the unhappy controversy. Lord Jowitt said the Government had tried to name those classes of murde? where the death sentence was a deter-, rent, such as in armed burglary, a man trying to shoot his way out after com. mitting a crime or a person killing a woman after committing rape. The death penalty was justified on one ground only—its deterrent effect.