CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 112, 8 April 1930, Page 7

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

" LORD BUCKMASTER’S VIEW. MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE. In giving evidence before the Capital Punishment Committee, in Britain, Lord Buckmaster, who was Lord Chancellor in 1916-16, said he not accept the theory that no innocent man had. been hanged. If Oscar Slater had been hanged no more would have been heard of the case. Nobody troubled about a dead man. Lord Buckmaster cited the Adolph Beck case and that of a man sentenced to death for a murder which Charles Peace later confessed he had committed. If the death penalty were retained, said Lord Buckmaster, murders should be divided into three degrees. He was not satisfied that capital punishment was a deterrent. Social opinion was the only real deterrent against crime. Human life was a sacred thing and not to be taken away, either by an individual or a Government. The Adolph Beck case is famous in British criminal annals. Beck, who was a man in good circumstances, was a victim of mistaken identity and served several years’ penal - servitude for a crime committed by. another man who bore a striking resemblance to him.. Shortly after his release from prison Beck was again arrested for a similar offence and placed in the dock. It was then revealed that he had a double and the real criminal was arrested. Beck, then a ruined man, was pardoned and compensated. Charles Peace was one of the most amazing criminals ever known. He had extraordinary powers of disguise, both in make-up and features, and oould twist his face in a way which would deceive his closest friend. After countless daring crimes he was finally betrayed by a woman and sentenced to death for murdering a policeman. He then (Confessed that he was guilty of a crime for which an innocent man was at that moment in the condemned cell.