CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13557, 7 November 1907, Page 5

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

ITS SUSPENSION IN- FRANCE. UNFAVOURABLE REFERENDUM. By Electric Telegraph. — Copyright. Received November 7, *8.36 a.m.) , PAftIS, November 6. -Tho newspaper Petit Pa^risicn has taken 6n "the/subject of the suspension of capital punishment by the President. / The jresult is. -that 1,412,iQQ0 protests have , been received against the President!^ 1 too freqtrejnlr exercise of his prerogative to. commute death sentences, while only 328,D00 siip^ortet the President's^cjjon,- , • 'j (Tfttenso interest in the capital punishment question in France by the recent decision of President Fallieres to commute the death sentence passed on ono Sdleilland for a brutal crime. It 1 appeared at the time that this was a* very unpopular decision. Soleilland was convicted of th^B murder of a little girl of thirteen years of age in. circumstances of .peculiar horror apd atrocity. It was on© of 1 those murders which lacerato and revolt the fefelings by its combination of t Callousness ajtid barbarity, I arid the Parisian population as a whole j considered that the only 1 possible pun- i ishment for the perpetratbr 1 Qf such a crime was to despatch him to the guillotine. SQ_jn.tens.e .was the feeling against Soleilland among the working population that a group of mothers in one of thje working-class quarters summoned a public meeting before the Church of Si. Anibroiso^ where the funeral service for the murdered little girl took place. Crowds of people came together, and it was only the elaborate precautions ',-taken by .the authorities ; for, the maintenance of order wi)iclf kept t^ej^mi^iif^st^t fqn within boundp. The victim *6f Solefflahd's" barbarities was tne, chi|d of working-class parents, but the interest in this case extended far bedrid the -social circle to which the girl belonged. It was the subject of serious consideration by, journals like the Temps and the Debats, and numerous memorials were sent up, io* the authdrities hy French juries petitioning the GovorMihettt^not td allow the law which sanctions capital punishment to fall into abeyance. In France all cases inrojving the penalty 6f death are dealt with by what is called a "Commission of Pardons." This Commission makes a confidential report upon the crime arid the criminal for the guidance of Tne President of the Republic, and the President's action is to sonic extent determined by the contents of this report. After receiving it, M. Fallieres jtent right in the teeth of popular 6pinion arid commuted Soleilland's sentence to penal servitude for life.) > - ? to— — i