In all criminal cases, the maxim of the constitution of England is, that jurors are judges both of the law and the fact. The petitioners go on to say, That, in the present state of the law, juries feel extremely reluctant to convict, where the penal consequences of the offence excite a conscientious horror on their minds, lest the rigorous performance of their duties as jurors should make them accessory to judicial murder. Hence, in courts of justice, a most unnecessary and painful struggle is occasioned by the conflict of the feelings of a just humanity with the sense of the obligation of an oath. In this petition we learn another fact respecting the reluctance of witnesses: That witnesses also are very frequently reluctant to give evidence, lest they might bring upon their consciences the stain of blood; and thus criminals, who, under a more rational and considerate code of laws, would meet the punishment due to their crimes, escape with impunity! For these and other reasons, the petitioners pray that the House may take the criminal laws into consideration, for the purpose of the revision and amendment of the same, by drawing a distinction between the simple invasion of the rights of property and crimes of violence and blood, and by abolishing the penalty of DEATH in all cases in which the legislative power cannot justify, in the eyes of God and man, that last and dreadful alternative-the extermination of the offender!* In addition to this testimony, hear the language of Sir William Blackstone, about seventy-five years ago: 'So dreadful a list † (of capital punishments) instead than divulge the circumstance, he acknowledged the acceptance to be his, and paid the money! * Selections from the London Morning Herald, vol. i. p. 79. At one time, according to Judge STORY, England presented the dark catalogue of one hundred and sixty capital offences. The Selections from the London Morning Herald say two hundred. See vol. i. p. 122. of diminishing, increases the number of offenders. The injured, through compassion, will often forbear to prosecute; jurics, through compassion, will sometimes forget their oaths, and either acquit the guilty, or mitigate the nature of the offence; and judges, through compassion, will respite one half the convicts, and recommend them to the royal mercy. Among so many chances of escaping, the needy and hardened offender overlooks. the multitude that suffer. He boldly engages in some desperate attempt to relieve his wants, or to supply his vices; and if, unexpectedly, the hand of justice overtakes him, he deems himself peculiarly unfortunate in falling, at last, a sacrifice to those laws which long impunity had taught him to contemn.' Such is the testimony borne by this great and learned judge, to the evil of sanguinary laws, and the temptations which they throw in the way to commit what he elsewhere calls 'pious perjuries.' And if men are tempted to commit 'pious perjuries' by the law, the crime is with those who make it, and not on those who for such an alteration as may remove that temptation forever.* pray * 'Observe that juryman in a blue coat,' said one of the judges at the Old Bailey to Judge Nares. 'Do you see him?' 'Yes.' 'Well, there will be no conviction of death to-day.' And the observation was confirmed by the fact.-Works of JEREMY BENTHAM, vol. i. p. 450. Edinburgh; 1843. A circumstance which shows the reluctance of jurors to bring in verdicts affecting life, happened in the case of Isaac Leavitt, who was tried for murder in Plymouth, Mass. The jury called up the judge about midnight, to know if they could enter a verdict of manslaughter. The reply was in the negative. They then agreed to bring in a verdict of murder, but unanimously to petition the executive for a commutation of the sentence to imprisonment, which, by the exertions of a philanthropist, whose name is dear to the writer, was afterwards effected. ESSAY IV. EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE PRISONER Executions of Boyington-Robinson—A pirate-Two brothersThistlewood—Armstrong—Mary Jones. 'Oh! what are these, Death's ministers, not men, who thus deal death Inhumanly to men, and multiply ten thousand fold the sin of him who slew His brother; for of whom such massacre Make they but of their brethren, men of men?' Paradise Lost. Book xi., line 675. THE moral effect of public executions may be viewed under three aspects: I. Upon the prisoner. II. Upon the spectators. It will be seen, even by the most superficial reader, that this division opens a wide field, and that, in a work like the present, only a limited view can be presented. One would naturally suppose that, when sentence of death was pronounced upon a criminal, and especially when preparation was making for its execution, that he would become very solemn, and that his heart would be opened to any kindly influences that might be presented. Facts prove the contrary. A sort of phrensy seems to pervade the whole mind; the heart becomes callous, and the criminal has no other feeling than that of revenge against that community by whose laws he has been condemned. This is not always the case; we are sometimes told that the prisoner died penitent! Monstrous law! At the very moment, then, when reformation has commenced, the individual is cruelly put to death! What should we think of the physician who should recommend that, when his patient began to recover, he should be murdered? We intend to confine our present labor to a consideration of the paralyzing influence of executions upon the prisoner. We cannot do this better than to give a few practical illustrations: EXECUTION OF BOYINGTON. [From the Mobile Commercial Advertiser.] He walked to the scaffold with a firm and unwavering step. His whole soul had been steeled and nerved up till the ministers of the law commenced robing him for death, and fixing the fatal noose. At that moment, he cowered, and sunk into the most abject desperation. A more sudden and fearful transition, perhaps, was never witnessed. Is there no hope? Must I die? were answered in the solemn negative. The blood forsook his cheeks, despair was written in awful marks upon his ashy features, and a scene of horror ensued that beggars description. He dashed from the foot of the scaffold among the military. But he was easily secured. Then followed a scene of horror, which we pray may find no parallel hereafter in the execution of the laws. The hopeless agony of the criminal was displayed in obstinate resistance to the performance of the necessary duties of the agents of the law; and, even when at last suspended from the fatal cord, his desperate clinging to the life he had forfeited, was shown by struggles to free his arms from the pinions, and clutching at the rope. He succeeded in thrusting his hands between the rope and his throat, and thus, resisting and struggling to the last, died despairing, and, for aught that human eye could see, impenitent. The last five minutes of his life were marked by a horror of dying, a prostration of energies, as remarkable as the sternness of nerve and reckless levity of carriage which had signalized him during the whole of the trial, and in the interval between condemnation and execution, up to that moment. Such was the end of Charles R. S. Boyington-a dreadful end of a bloody tale. The horror of the punishment with which it closes, compares fitly, in tragic intensity of interest, with the terrible atrocity of the crime. The victim, a gentle and confiding invalid, fell by the hand of an assassin-that assassin his professed friend-in an open thoroughfare, beneath the walls of the graveyard, the busy hum of human voices warning him of the neighborhood of busy life, and the tombs of the dead speaking to the murderer of the end of life-the beginning of eternity.* SENTENCE OF PETER ROBINSON, AT NEW BRUNSWICK, FOR THE MURDER OF MR. SUYDAM. [From O'Sullivan's Report against the Punishment of Death. N. Y., 1841.] was tremendous to see Smiling to the crowd, After his sentence, the rush him, the ladies in particular! he said to the sheriff: 'Remember, you must share the fees with me that you get for hanging me.' And such was his hardened indifference, to the last moment, that, after he was ironed and locked up in his cell, he said to the jailor-As I am a carpenter, I think I ought to be employed to help build my own gallows, and I could make my own coffin, and give my wife the money. All I ask is a snug platform and a strong rope; and if Jakey Edmonds goes to heaven, I don't want to go there. I won't have a d-d priest come near me.' The court ordered that his wife and child might see him, at all times consistent with the prisoner's safety, and in the presence of some of the proper authorities. Up to the last moment he jested. 'I do solemnly believe,' he once said, 'that I shall burst out a laughing under the gallows. Oh, if they would only let me have *It was subsequently ascertained that Boyington was innocent! |