THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 1911. MISPLACED SYMPATHY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 158, 20 June 1911, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 1911. MISPLACED SYMPATHY.

The agitation which spread through the Dominion from Auckland to the Bluff for the icprieve of the young Maori murderer, Tahi Kaka having failed, we feel released from all restraint to comment on the matter. To make our meaning clear, we take our readers into our confidence and confess that while the decision of Cabinet “hung in the balance” we shrank from writing one word which might indirectly influence the mind of the Executive—in other words we shudderingly turned from the thought of in any way assisting to launch even a blackened soul into eternity. We were aware there was absolutely not one single extenuating circumstance in connection with the Maori youth’s awful crime to justify the raising of our voice to save him from suffering the extreme penalty of the law, yet we could not deliberately utter one word that might in some way have helped to seal his doom . No conscience pricked us for neglect of public duty, because we knew the responsibility for the murderer's life or death rested upon a Cabinet which from the first displayed a stricter regard for the law than for sentiment. But the “die is cast” and Kaka is to hang, therefore nothing that we or other newspapers say can lengthen or shorten the unfortunate wretch’s life. Although, however, the question as far as he is concerned is closed, there is a little to be said about the principle of capital punishment ; the agitations that inevitably follow each death sentence, and the cruel tasks that are imposed upon the Executive by having, as in this instance, to repeat several times its decision to let the law take its course. Regarding the principle and the need for capital punishment, there are many people who, for various reasons, are totally opposed to the death sentence for any crime. Everyone admits its abhorrence ; that it is a barbaric method of punishment. But is not a murderer a barbarian and is it not fitting that the most abhorrent penalty known to civilisation should be the assured fate of those who give way to the homicidal instincts they are inflicted with ? A certain judge said to a murderer “I am not sentencing you to death to punish you for murder, but that murder shall not be committed.” It is in this light that sentimentalists who sign petitions for reprieves should view the condemnation of murderers. If they did so they would restrain their feelings, and refuse in any way to make* the duty of those whose lot it is to administer the law more painful and difficult than what it must be in the first place, even without the persistent appeals of the public for mercy to be shown to a man who himself has shown no mercy to others. Many who object to capital punishment do so on the grounds of the medical doctrine that homicide is usually if not always evidence of mental disease and irresponsibility, but this, one would think, should rather tend to incline the public mind in favour of the law than against it. It seems strange that the community should desire to preserve and tend a class of dangerous lunatics and to give them, , as Charles Kingsley says, the right to kill a couple of warders a week.” But to return to the case of the condemned man in Auckland, the- facts relating to the method by which he “did’ ’poor old Freeman to death are most revolting and they carry the conviction that the crime was as brutal and unnecessary, from the prisoner’s standpoint, as any in the annals of the Dominion. To reprieve Kaka, then, under these circumstances, would place all legal executions under the category of cold-blooded murders, for if ever the death penalty was deserved this man merited it. We would remind those good people who in the softness of heart nurse more sympathy for the prisoner than for his- victim, that there are many Tahi Kaka’s still at large. Secure the reprieve of the one now in custody at Auckland and you prolong his life, but do not forget that your clemency would

be the cause of many innocent people suffering similar violent deaths to the one which, without a moment’s warning, brought the harmless old gumdigger face to face with his God.