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1 Extracts from Evidence on Criminal-Law: Lord's Report 1 (1846)

handle is hein.death/exevcl0001 and id is 1 raw text is: t EXTRACTS FROM EVIDENCE ON CRIMINAL-LAW. LORDS' REPORT. EVIDENCE OF E. RUSHTON, EsQ.-Page 191. Is it your opinion that Capital Punishment can, in all cases, even for murder and arson, be safely dispensed with, and that we can trust for the safety of life to the deterring effect of lesser punishments ? It is. Is it your opinion that, supposing a person is doubting whether he shall shed blood, or be satisfied with taking his chance of getting a man's purse, or of getting property by an act of burglary, the fear of Death in the one case, and the fact of its not being Capital in the other, may not have the effect of deterring him from shedding blood ? I do not believe it at all. Do you think that if the Punishment of Death for the crime of murder were abolished, there would be any danger of vengeance being exercised by individuals taking'the life of the murderer ? No ; I do not think more than there is now. Murder includes almost all grades of the crime of killing in its legal signification. What Secondary Punishment would you substitute for it ? I would imprison for life, if necessary. Where? In a state prison. At home? At home or abroad. Would not-strict imprisonment in a penal colony have a great effect ? Where, would be a matter open to argument. But your punishment for the most aggravated crime would be imprison. ment for life ? I have come to that conclusion from what I have seen. Some of your Lordships know that on the Northern Circuit, in looking out of the Robing Room at York, if you look to the left hand there is the gibbet, and there is a space of ground before you open to the river. I went in there one morning when the bodies of two men and one woman were hanging on the same scaffold, and there was a crowd of several hundred persons before it, manifesting the greatest levity and utter carelessness and recklessness, and many women with children in their arms, children running about, and idle lads, as if it were a show. The punishment, in