Death by Law

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from Death by Law: From the Outlook on July 26, 1922 It has been estimated that in the last thirty years, the American people have had put to death four thousand criminals. With that figure in mind, it is fitting that we ask ourselves the question: Has capital punishment proved successful in the light of practical experience, and is it in keeping with advanced thought and our innermost conception of right and wrong? To begin with, the death penalty has been administered since the memory of man knoweth not to the contrary. It may be therefore concluded that it has had a fair trial - that its merits or demerits should be known today, if ever. And if we are ready to concede that the long continued adherence to a practice does not in itself indicate its unquestioned merit, an honest, fair-minded and dispassionate consideration of the problem may be had. There was a time when the violation of most any law of God or man was punishable with death. In the reign of Henry VIII, history tells us, 72, 000 petty thieves were executed. In the course of centuries, society gradually reserved this supreme penalty for the most abhorrent and atrocious offenses in the catalog of crimes, until today, in practically every state where it continues, it is largely confined to cases of first degree murder, treason, and in some cases, rape and train robbery. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.