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The execution of
criminals by hanging is not a success as an example, and seems to have a few
terrors for the criminal classes. The condemned criminal is made to occupy the
position of a martyr, and receives the utmost attention and notoriety for many
days before his death. He announces to the world that he intends to "die like a
man," and he wants that fact published in big type in all the newspapers
throughout the country. He has every reason to believe that his death will be
painless and instantaneous, because the modern method of execution by hanging,
when properly conducted -- as in Goslaw's case -- results in severing the
spinal cord and destroying sensation instantly. This probably explains why the
man who is about to be executed is usually to coolest man present, and is
always referred to as a man of nerve. He has become reconciled to the
situation, and the affair is a sort of picnic to him. The principal suffering
is done by the community in which the execution takes place. The agonizing
details of the affair are forced on the people, and kept before them by an
over-zealous press, and the atmosphere is filled with horror for many days. In
other words, the present method of conducting executions in the United States
is much more of a punishment than an example to the people generally. An
execution is always a shock to the community. And why should innocent people be
punished in such a manner? Goslaw alone struck Grant, and he alone should have
been punished. No one else had any hand in the killing of Grant, and yet there
were hundreds of people in this city who suffered great mental distress during
the past week on Goslaw's account; and all because of the method of execution
and the publicity given to the affair. How much better for all parties
concerned, and how much greater as an example it would be, to have no more said
or heard in public of a criminal after sentence of death was passed upon him.
Give the people a chance to wonder what became of him? Give him chloroform or
gas, or anything else that will remove him without shocking other people, and
let him be dead to the world from the moment the sentence of death is
pronounced. Let us try to act like civilized people and have some style about
us.
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