CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 September 1924, Page 5

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

QUESTION AGAIN DEBATED. VIEWS OF MEDICAL EX-PERTS. Ijondon, August 30. Is hanging a deterrent to crime? The question is being largely debated in view of recent capital offences. Medical experience would suggest the recognition of the fact that there are two degrees of murder, and to favour the reserving of hanging for the calculating murderer, whose object is often robbery. A medical correspondent of the Daily News points out that some inmates of British criminal mental hospitals, whose crimes are very similar to those of less fortunate murderers who are hanged, eventually become good citizens, and the community. The discipline in the mental hospitals is much less severe than confinement in cells in Continental countries, where recovery is rare. Some homicides at Broadmoor have been treated for 40 and 50 years, whereas in Italy this type of criminal seldom survives more than a couple of years. Experts state that they consider that 'hanging ie no deterrent to .passionate criminals, but a rea] influence to burglars and other professional criminals. The professional English burglar does not carry firearms, fearing that he might commit murder, and incur the supreme penalty of the law. Horrified in the change in her husband, Patrick Mahon, condemned to death for the Crumbles murder, Mrs. Mahon, writing in the People, says that the long wait before execution is a modern form of torture. "Surely,” she says, “it would be better for a condemned. man to -be put to death while sleeping, by means of a deadly gas. Those having material, medical, and spiritual charge of the prisoner, could fix the time, and thus save the unjustifiable agony -which Iras worn Pat to a shadow.”