PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
EPEC.O.885
(uduilul
TITT
3PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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This would be an important consideration if the cuses were not very rare in which a man is wrongfully convicted of murder and his innocence of the murder is afterwards ascertained. As it is I am not sure that it ought to weigh much in favour of giving the benefit of a doubt to the and I think that there are means. person accused; by which it might be made to weigh very little. The execution of a man by mistake for a murder which he has not committed would not affect the public mind or the action of juries seriously if every one was satisfied that whether he had or had not committed this particular crime he was a notorious villain and had gone near to deserve hanging on other grounds. Thus, if previous convictions, duly registered, were forthcoming, the evil of the error would be mainly obviated. And probably, in the very rare cases of persons convicted and executed for murders they have not committed, there are few indeed, and almost nome, in which it might not be made tolerably clear, either by previous convictions or by other evidence, that the man convicted was a man of infamous life, and guilty, assuredly or presumedly, of many offences. For the rare mistakes that are made of this kind will not be found to have been made in that class of murders which have resulted from casual impulse. The evidence in cases of casual impulse will hardly be of a kind to admit of mistakes.
Such appear to me to be the questions which may arise in regard to the punishment of death in
Imprisonment for life or long
terms.
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connection with the various rules and maxims favourable to the accused, if the statistics of crime should show results of the nature of those here hypothetically propounded.
But whatever these results may prove to be, I think that there is no part of our criminal law which demands graver reconsideration than that whereby rigorous imprisonment for life or for long terms of years is made to take the place ol' capital or other severe punishments,
In treating of “ proximity," Bentham and also Beccaria seem to have had under considera- tion only the speed and promptitude with which an offender may be brought to punishment.* Important as this item is, it is not, I think, the most important part of the element of proximity, nor is it that in respect of which the English system is, in my opinion, most largely in error; for there is now no unreasonable delay in bringing offenders to trial, if they are brought to trial at all. The great error of our law in awarding penal imprisonment appears to me to be that it attaches
a value to duration which does not really belong to it.t Of the persons who commit crimes
Bentham, Morals and Legislation." Ch. 4, § 2, and Ch. 14, § 16. Beccaria, “Dei Delitti e delle Pene." Ch. xix. "Prontezza della Pena."
† Beccaria, in his desire to accumulate pleas against the punishment of death, says:—" Non è l'intenzione della pena che fa il maggior effetto sull' animo uinaño, ma l'estenzione di essa"*
ch. 28). This is, I think, the reverse of the truth.
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