DEAD HEADS

Thanks chiefly to the dramatic nature of the trial and execution not long ago of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, the question of capital punishment has come up again. Much opinion has been aired, editorially and otherwise, and conclusions have been varied. From lively descriptions of ghostly apparitions in the prison, doctored up with as much sensationalism as possible, to thoughtful attempts to reach an ultimate judgment upon the whole problem by virtue of a particular example newspapers have treated the case from every conceivable aspect. And so the controversy is again aroused, with more than usual intensity this time, as to whether a murderer should pay with his own life. For various humanitarian reasons eight of the forty-eight states have abolished capital punishment, there remaining forty that have preserved it, although they differ in procedure, most of them favoring electrocution or hanging. In any of these states when an execution takes place publicity is not lacking and the readers of the press are treated to an emotional debauch. In the eight states that deprive their citizens of the thrills attendant upon an execution, there is substituted the fascinating possibility that the offenders may some day again be at large to provide a little more entertainment. The result is pretty much the same. Violent death seems consistently exciting.

It is interesting to note in relation to the problem of meting out justice to an offender, and in connection with the sentiment so easily aroused by any significant electrocution, that the banks of Texas have found it effective and expedient to put a premium on summary punishment for bank robbers. Five thousand dollars for a dead bank robber, but not a cent for a live one! The arrangement in Texas seems effective and popular, but distinctly pragmatical.

For its salutary influence on the minds of a reading public, this quiet and traditionally Texan shooting may indeed be praised. But in its practice, details must develop that are judicially questionable. A bandit, hardly willing to identify himself as a justifiable target, must be shot, first and approached afterwards. Again, he must be shot, for the safety of his persecutor, at a reasonable distance. Sent from the hand of an excitable person evisioning rewards, the bullet is more than likely to pass through several estimable citizens before it reaches some suspect later found both innocent and dead. The weapons of prohibition agents have taught the country the menace of the armed pursuit of offenders. Both the security of Texas banks and an offective, sensible handling of social enemies are laudable ends, but the means chosen by these bankers to attain them must, at least, be questioned.