DEATH SENTENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, 10 May 1948, Page 6

DEATH SENTENCE

DEBATED IN LORDS London, National interest in the arguments for and against the suspension of the death penalty for murder has been intensified by the two days' debate in the House of Lords, in which notable contributions have been made by Judges. Though the Lords gave a second reading to the Bill without a division, there seems little doubt that when it reaches the committee stage in about, a fortnight the clause will be dropped on a free vote. The Bill will then be returned to the House of Commons, where it is expected that the clause will be put back. The Bill will then go back again to the Lords, and if the clause is opposed once more, two years will have elapsed before it i be reconsidered. One opinion, .mwever, is that the Lords, having made a token resistance, will pass the whole measure. Whatever happens, nobody will be hanged in Britain in the intervening period. There are many who support the view that the public should decide the question of whether murderers should hang, for since the Commons passed the Bill, numbers of people have voiced their approval of hanging. This was a point made by Lord Halifax, who said he could find no subject more obviously one for direct reference to the people. It was, he said, the duty, of the Peers to act in such a way’ as to ensure the further review of the death penalty clause by the Commons. Lord Salisbury also remarked that this was no mere party difference. “It cuts far deeper than that,” he said , Although Lord Templewood made an important contribution to the arguments of those who are against hanging, the most striking remarks of the second day’s debate come from Lord Chief Justice Goddard in his maiden speech. He hushed the House to horrified silence with a recital of crimes from a Judge's casebook, and declared that bestial criminals should be destroyed. “Some cases are so horrible that I feel actual physical nausea in having to listen to them,” he said. Lord Salisbury, leader of the Conservative Peers, supported by Lord Halifax and the Liberals, told the Government that in their view the Commons’ decision to aoolish hanging does not bind the House of Lords. He hoped it would become an issue between the two Houses, but the debate made it clear that the Lords will challenge the clause abolishing the death penalty when it comes up in committee next month.

“It seems probable that the Lords will delete that clause and refer it back to. the Commons," said Lord Salisbury.