Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 5

The Capital Punishment Argument Continues To Rage Executions An Page Five THE CALGARY HERALD Saturday, Dec. 15, 1962 Abolition Its Value As A Deterrent 1 Is A Point i NEW YORK In 1890, wlien New York State authorities were first in the world to execute anyone by electricity, the primary question was: Is electrocution humane? There has never been a clear answer. Seventy-two years and 692 etectric-ehair deaths later, New York is contemplating the more general question: should capital punishment be reamed, revised or abolished? Eighteen convicted ureters in Sing Sing Prison's tf.ith row have acute interest in this answer, as they await t' outcome of their individual appeals. Legislative ac-l in to eliminate the death penalty could be a short cut, but it isn't likely not soon, at least. olished the death penalty, except in cases of treason an exception that has never been applied.

Greeks abolished capital punishment in 10B2, Venezuela in 1803. At the same time, Belgium, without formally rescinding it, stopped applying the death penalty. This approach has been followed by Luxembourg since 1822. In practice, Great Britain is virtually the only nation in Western Europe which still imposes the death penalty. Treason, Wor Crimes Except tor some cases of treason or war crimes, capital punishment has bean abolished throughout other nations of Western Europe and in many nations of Latin America.

In the Western Hemisphere, the death penalty was recently reaffirmed in Canada, and it remains in the United States in 42 states and the District of Columbia. Elsewhere in the world. car itai punishment remains in most of Eastern Eurone, Africa, Asia and Australia. The Soviet Union abolished the death penalty briefly, then applied it extensively under Stalin, after a period of moderation, has been using a firing squad extensively for economic crimes against the state, many of them allegedly committed by Jews. Israel sets the death penalty only for crimes against the people.

In its 14-year history, it has executed only one man Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi mass executioner, whose hanging May 31 provoked fresh debate over the merits of capital punishment as a deterrent. Deterrence is the major argument employed in defence of capital punishment: that without tlie extreme penalty more people would commit more murders or other serious crimes. Despite numerous attempts, no convincing statistics have been compiled either to support or refute that theory. A lengthy presentation of the attempts is included in a revised report to the American Law Institute by Thorsten Sel-lin. criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Sellin said anyone who studied the data would have to conclude that- "The death penalty as we use it exercises no influence on the extent or fluctuating rates of capital crimes. It has failed as a deterrent." Report Shied Away Britain's Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1949-53) examined much the same data and shied away, saying in its report: "The figures afford no reliable evidence one way or the othar. many other factors come into the question." In 1906, a joint parliamentary committee in Canada, after studying this data, concluded that capital punishment has deterred professional criminals in Canada at least. Those who want capital punishment abolished insist that it deters no more today than the heads of highway men posted at crossroads deterred robbery in Eighteenth Century England.

The apocryphal Crucial In The A major spur to abolition of the death penalty has been fear of executing an innocent man. There is no complete proof that this has happened in modern times in the United States or England, but there are many suspicions and many cases where the innocent had hairbreadth escapes. One of the deepest suspicions concerns Timothy Evans, a London bus driver who was accused in 1S30 of strangling his wife and infant daughter, largely on the testimony of a neighbor. Three years after Evans was hanged he was tried only for murder of the baby the neighbor was in the dock. He was Jolm Christie, the Notting Hill stranger, confessed to killing at least seven women, including Mrs.

Evans but not the Evans baby. A government inquiry decided that Evans was "not wrongfully executed." Fear of committing 'or having committed) irreversible wrong through execution prompted Wisconsin, Maine and Rhode Island to abolish th death penalty from its penal code. Even in states which retain the death penalty, or have reinstated it after a period of abolition, the trend has been to use it more sparingly in recent years. Executions Decline Executions In the United States ranged well over 150 a year in the 1930s, declined through the 1940s to below 100 a year in the 1950s. The average since 1938 has been less than 50.

The total for 1961 was a low of 42. Of the 3,096 executions for murder in the United States in the 1930-57 period, more than half (1.706) occurred in 16 Southern states and the District of Columbia. The remainder were divided more or less evenly by region among the Northeast. North Central and Western states. By Walter Lister, Jr.

Of The Xerald Tribune News Service Doubts -a Dout the wisdom as well the morality of deliberately taking a life, for whatever reason, have long nagged at the social consciences of Western man, particularly in the last two centuries. Italian reformer Cesare Beccaria initiated the question eloquently in a 1764 essay, On Crimes and Punishments, in which he said cruel sentences had a brutalizing effect on society, breeding crime rather than deterring it. Governments began to back sway from the death penalty midway in the Nineteenth Century. Whila Europe talked about it, the State of Michigan was the first to take official action. In 1846, nine years after becoming a state, Michigan ab Throbbing Drums a.

I. COMFORT FOR AN has often been the coincidence of a sensational murder. Missouri abolished the death penalty in 1917. then restored it two years later, after hoodlums killed two policemen in a gun fight. Delaware abolished capital punishment, while keeping the whipping post.

In 1958. Then a senseless double murder prompted the Legislature to pass, late in 1961 over the gov V' 1 'i' -( fc.r )T EMOTIONAL PICKET ernor's veto, a pending bill to restore the death penalty. The experience in Delaware was a psychological set-back to abolitionists who had hoped the state's 1953 action would pave the way for similar action elsewhere. Now Delaware's experience is an example of what many stata Legislatures fear might happen if they were to eliminate the death penalty entirely. End G.S.L's SCHOOL FOR DIPLOMATS Debate The over-all decline in executions has been influenced by a general backing away from making death the mandatory punishment for premeditated murder.

In the 1930s Connecticut. Massachusetts, New Mexico. New York, North Carolina, Vermont and the District of Columbia had that mandatory provision. New York is the only state that has kept it. All others allow jury or judge to choose between death or life imprisonment.

New York permits this choice in cases of murder committted in the course of a felony. Penal Law Revision Elimination of the mandatory death penalty in New York is expected to be one recommendation by the state's commission on revision of the penal law and criminal code, but there is considerable doubt when it may be made. This nine-man commission is charged with overhauling New York State's tangle of criminal law. Chairman Richard Bartlett said the commission will make several recommendations to the 1963 state Legislature, but not necessarily concerning capital punishment. The 18 men in death row may disagree, but the commission feels there is no hurry.

The commission's mail on capital punishment runs better than 10-to-l for abolition, but the members feel public opinion is more evenly divided. A national poll in 1938 indicated 50 per cent of Americans are opposed to the death penalty. 42 per cent are for it and 8 per cent are undecided. Except for heinous cases, there appears to be a moratorium in practice in many states. Studies in states which experimented with abolition, then readopted the death penalty, indicates no significant change in homicide rates one way or the other.

But there mirror, plus '2695 Guarantee, '2495 Like GENEVA Eager young diplomats from many of Africa's new nations ill be stepping out in the new year into the austere world of protocol, after graduating from the roost polished of finishing schools, the Palais des Nations in Geneva. They will be the first to complete an intensified six-months course, split between New York and Geneva, de-v'vi by the United Nations for inexperienced aspirants to the diplomatic corps of underdeveloped lands. Credit for this idea, now incorporated as a permanent feature of UN activities, scene is of a pickpocket on the public gallows, with other pickpockets having a field day among the onlookers. Sir Ernest Cowers, after completing his work as chairman of the British royal commission, told how his personal opinion had changed: Gradually Dispelled "Before serving. .1 should probably have said that I was in favor of the death penalty and disposed to regard abolitionists as people hose hearts were bigger than their heads.

Four years of close study of the subject gradually dispelled that feeling. "In the end I became convinced that the abolitionists were right in their conclusions though I could not agree with all their arguments and that so far from the sentimental approach leading into their camp and the rational one into that of the supporters, it as the other ay about." This statement was not part of the report, however, and Britain merely modified the extent of its death penalty in 1957 to limit it to certain capital murders. These include murder by shooting or explosion but not by other methods unless the victim is a policeman or a prison officer, or if the murder occurs in the course of theft or resisting arrest or is a second murder. But the 34-year-old leader of the party Raayat. variously described as a printer, a lawyer, and a veterinary surgeon, was not content with the worthy aim of streamlining further the welfare state.

Rebelling against its proposed inclusion in a future federation of Malayasia, whose true centre would be Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaya. Azahari wanted Brunei itself to be the jewel in a triple crown, under which would also be united the much larger, but poorer neighboring British colonies of Sarawak and North Borneo in an independent federation. The Things They Say By Andrew Ewart Of The Observer Foreign News Service eoDege for diplomats come from nations outside Africa a Cypriot and an Afghan. These young men have to maintain a strenuous pace in keeping up with their "great leap forward." They attend lectures given by internationally renowned scientists and public men, and remain glued to a score of headohones broadcasting simultaneous translations into a dozen African dialects. Their tough curriculum includes international rights, relations and organizations: trade and traffic regulations; diplomatic history and foreign relations, the theory of government and the problems of neutrality.

More importantly, the students are learning to understand the other fellow's problems. English-speaking Africans from former British colonies are learning French in Geneva so that they may converse with their countrymen from France's former African colonies who, in their turn, are learning English. The students are given a monthly grant of 1.000 Swiss francs. But their extra-mural activities are quite different from the diplomats of the older, and perhaps staider. nations.

Their apartments resound to the throbbing rhythms of their native drums, and the students themselves gyrate to the beat of emotional dances they have brought straight from home. One has the feeling that, when these young men are done with their finishing school, the Western world will he in for exciting new diplomacy. As one of them said: "We are people of feeling. You say: 'we think, therefore we we say: "we feel, therefore we are." nn 0 Miiiyt Harold Laski at the London School of Economics and is now the Sudan's state secretary for foreign relations. Shortly after the Sudan achieved independence, on Jan.

1, 1936, Yassein persuaded the late Dag Hammarks-jold, the UN secretary-general, of the growing need for a college to instruct new diplomats some of them moving straight from the bush to university. He was bent on substituting for the archaic pride that battles are won on the playing fields of a nation's schools, the prospect that battles might be prevented in the lecture rooms of the Palais des Nations. But it was only in March this year that Yassein's dream began to be realized. He was concerned, first of all. to bring together Africans with two different cultures the Islamite Arab and the Christian Negro.

So far only two of the "new boys" at this these Year 9z W) Wealth Was Not Enough In Brunei elf are Ststte In Unrest CH EURO LETS After Class must go to a young diplomat from one of Africa's newly-independent nations Mohammed Osman Yassein, who studied under Professor It is doubtful whether Brunei can look far to the future, however, because the oil fields are drying up. In 20 years, it is estimated, Brunei's production will not be more than one-tenth of what it is today, unless new fields are discovered either on land or at sea. Brunei's last annual report makes curious reading, however. It opens with the sort of sober, frank admission that only a well-filled wallet sanctions: "The year showed a steady decline in the revenue of the state, due no doubt to a fall-off of the production of oil and partly to the trade recession, and as a result of there being no new development plan introduced by government." A major irrigation plan has suffered seriously "from a lack of water." Coconut cultivation Ls termed unsatisfactory and the production of sago flour "vu-tually stopped." There were only 11 minor construction projects by the government. Major projects Today's Best From A 1'iTl As Low As 12 CHEVROLET BEL iR SEDAM.

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'OOQC G.S.L. Special Warranty efcefc3 were limited to the building or extension of the residences of the sultan, the first minister, and the state secretary. The explanation of this stagnation is simple. The senior jobs of the administration are filled with Brunei Malays of good family standing and reassuring bank balances but little or no other qualifications. In the past, they have watched high-level British officials sit in their offices and sign orders which were translated into roads, bridges and schools.

They have rid themselves of the bulk of thes Europeans, including thoe down on the construction sites and they cannot now understand why, when they sign an order, that the chances are 50-50 that nothing whatsoever will happen. If the object of the National Army and its leader, Mahmud Azahari. in trying to seize power, had been to remove the rieadwood from the administration, even those formally bound to uphold it might secretly have sympathized. Europe (France) vv; Buy thm th New Way! The? Car, th mane (tig lU. i.

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The regime against which the National Army and its backers in Brunei's party Raayat rebelled provides the people with free education, free medical treatment, pensions and care for all over 60. and for the sick and disabled and all their dependents, including the blind, the leprous and the insane. For these services, the state levies no income tax and demands no insurance contributions. And it can afford them. Brunei, a small wedge of territory little more than square m2es in area on the north coast of the island of Borneo, has so much money invested in gilt-edged secur-lt es overseas that the interest covers ordinary annual government expenditures More 90 per cent Brunei's income comes from nil.

The pi'otectoratc has a population of about S3 000 and its turn out aN)uf RjOoo barrels of ot! a day Oil 'and its derivatives and by-products) provide Brunei, the third-largest prod'jfT in the Commonwealth, with an annual inonm rwar a We French are a smiling nation. The Anglo-Saxons only smile after six Scotches and then they smile too much. Fcrnandvl I like cities and New York is the only real city city. Truman Capott Women this fall are wearing their bosoms flatter and their bottoms are earned higher and slightly to the right. Tr.ey are still wearing dark circles under their eyes as if they were dead and enjoying it.

Columnist John Crosby Tt a pleasure hen schools are open. You know it's safe to walk in the streets. Joo E. Low A A N'jie-tenihs of English poetic literature ls the result either of vulgar careensm. or of a poet trywz to keep his hand m.

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