HOWARD LEAGUE’S FURTHER QUERY ON DEATH PENALTY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22971, 14 June 1949, Page 5

HOWARD LEAGUE’S FURTHER QUERY ON DEATH PENALTY

(P A) WELLINGTON, June 13. “The reply of the Leader of the Opposition to my statement concerning propaganda for a reversion to hanging is praiseworthy for its restraint and moderation,” said the president of the Wellington branch of the Howard League ter Penal Reform, Mr. J. S. Burns, today.

“If everyone showed the same restraint there would be no need for an acute public controversy.

“When I referred to ‘catering for. a crude and reactionary public opinion I had in mind a certain few of Mr. Holland’s colleagues who persist in making inflammatory, emotional and factually incorrect statements concerning homicide and hanging. It was necessary to refute this propaganda during a general election campaign which might place us all in a false position and in which the league might appear to be taking a political attitude. "Much as we would regret this the league cannot sink into opposition to capital punishment, but the National Party could refrain from making it an election issue. Never in any country before has a political party campaigned on such a special point of penal administration.

“Now, however, Mr. Holland has introduced an additional issue in stating that his party would make provision for caiptal punishment in certain cases. We are now entitled to ask in which cases. “This is a most important point, because the world's leading criminologists are agreed that while a just classification of homicides may be possible in the absence of capital punishment, it is impossible so long as the death penalty is exacted in any cases. Will Mr. Holland tell us how the National Party proposes to solve the apparently insoluble problem of which cases should hang and. which should not?” concluded Mr. Burns.