CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 26 September 1930, Page 3

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

DETECTION OF MURDERERS. • STANDARD OF BRITISH POLICJ •.'-'•J The most searching examination ever made into capital punishment concluded in Londoij on July 30, when the House of Commons Select Committee on the question held its final sitting for evidence. • , M. Erik Kainpmann, the Danish General Director of Prisons, was the last witness, and he had prepared for the committee a document of 250,000 words. He said there had been nd execution in , , Denmark since 1892. That was the case of a man who had killed three warders in ■ seven years. Three death sentences were passed on him, and the third was carried out. . Sir Ernley Blackwell, of the Home Office, spoke of “arguments that are publicly made about undetected murderers. He said: “We are constantly asked how it is that in 1927, for instance, there were 127 murders known to the police and only 01 persons were arrested. The . answer was that in 43 cases the murderers committed suicide. In niany other cases there was more than one victim., A man, for example, turns on the gas and kills his wife, three children and himself. That case goes down as four murders —and no arrest.” Sir John Anderson, also of the Home Office, said: “We have reached a standard in the administration of the law, at any rate as to the capital offence, which'l do not think is approached in auv other country. Nobody knows that . better than the professional criminal. He added, however, that premeditating poisoners, as a rule, believed that they could “gel away with it.” “Yes.” remarked Sir Ernley BlaceK- , well, “I believe a good many do.”