Defense lawyers for Icidnap-slayer Burton Abbott (third from left) got a stay of execution minutes too late.
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111
Death Row
(Continued)
"new evidence" to back up their claims. Nowadays,
abolitionists are citing two incidents which almost led
California to outlaw the death penalty.
On March 15, 1957, kidnap-murderer Burton Abbott
was strapped in the San Quentin death chamber, and
cyanide pellets were dropped in sulphuric acid to
create a poisonous gas.
At the same time, the secretary for Gov. Goodwin
Knight was frantically trying to reach Warden Harley
O. Teets. The goveYnor had granted a short stay of
execution so lawyers could appeal to a higher court.
The call arrived two minutes too late. Abbott could
. not be rescued from the gas chamber without endan
gering the lives of spectators and attendants. Those
opposed to capital punishment seized on the incident
to declare a man had been deprived of his last resort to
law by a penalty that should be reserved for God alone.
Still, they added, compared to Barbara Graham,
Abbott may have been lucky. The California mur
deress twice got last-minute reprieves, once after
being strapped in the death chair. Eventually Barbara
Graham was executed. Nobody questioned her guilt,
but the frightening way she paid for her crime was
used to fight the state's death penalty.
The California assembly did pass a six-year mora
torium on the death penalty, but the bill was pigeon
holed in a senate committee. Nevertheless, capital
punishment opponents say they gained new ground in
discrediting legalized killings in a state which ranked
sixth in the number of executions in 1956.
The strongest argument on behalf of capital punish
ment is that its severity will deter felons
from murder or criminal attacks. Police officers
contend that abandoning the death penalty, as six
states and many foreign countries have done, strips '
"mad dog" killers of their last restraint and makes law
enforcement more hazardous.
Opponents offer crime statistics to disprove this con -tention.
The figures show that the six states which
have abolished or restricted the death penalty have
homicide rates substantially below the national average
of 5.5 for 100,000 population.
The Michigan rate is 3.9, Wisconsin 1.3, North Dakota
1.3, Maine 1.2, Minnesota 1.1, and Rhode Island .4.
On the other hand, such states as Georgia, Ala
bama, and Florida, which usually lead the nation in
carrying out the death penalty, have homicide rates
at least double that of the national average.
The statistics don't mean a state can cut its homicide
rate by outlawing the death penalty, say abolitionists.
But they maintain the figures disprove any correlation
between capital punishment and respect for human life.
Many crime experts agree with them on this "point.
Clinton T. Duffy, who as warden of San Quentin wit
nessed 150 executions, says he never met a felon who
gave a thought to punishment, death or otherwise,
while committing his crimes.
Advocates of the death penalty have a reply, of
course. They tell how the state of Washington abol
ished capital punishment in 1913. In the six following
years, officials reported that capital crimes rose strik
ingly, and they advocated reinstating the death penalty.
The legislature hesitated until a murderer boasted
that the worst the state could do to him was to provide
free room and board for the rest of his life. Intense
public reaction impelled lawmakers to put capital pun
ishment back in effect.
A mong all the free world powers, only France and
" the United States still retain the death penalty.
Great Britain, which only 150 years ago hanged
a 13-year-old boy for stealing a spoon, recently called
a moratorium on the death penalty in most cases
while experts studied its merits and shortcomings.
One of the most famous of modern crimes con
tributed to agitation against England's traditional hang
ing. In 1950 Timothy Evans was arrested for the mur
der of his wife and child. He denied the crimes and
accused his neighbor, John Christie. The latter testified
against Evans, and the courts believed the mild-mannered
neighbor. Evans went to the gallows protesting
his innocence to the last.
Three years later new tenants in Christie's flat tore
open a wall and found the bodies of six women whom
Christie had lured to his home and murdered. Christie
himself was hanged, but for Timothy Evans justice
came too late.
In the Christie-Evans tragedy, abolitionists found a
new point. Not only is capital punishment barbaric
and valueless, they said, but it can result in irreparable
injustice for which the entire community is responsible.
Prison officials opposed to capital punishment cite
another kind of injustice characteristic of many "Death
Rows." Most of the inmates are poor and ignorant.
They can't afford expert legal aid and are too un
schooled to avail themselves of anything but the most
meager protections of the law.
Smarter, richer murderers usually "beat the death
rap," and criminologists cite specific cases from the
famed Leopold-Loeb trial to modern gangland slayings
where high-priced legal talent averted a death penalty.
Such arguments seem to have little effect on the
public, however. A newspaper survey in the United
States found that 68 percent of those polled favored
capital punishment, 7 percent were undecided, and
only 25 percent were against it.
Compromise may be the ultimate solution in the
battle over capital punishment. While abolitionists
have been unsuccessful in outlawing it, their argu
ments have made juries and courts reluctant to impose
the death penalty. In 1936, 194 persons were executed
in the United States; in 1946, the figure dropped to 131;
and in 1956 to 65.
The best guess today is that few states will ever
drop the death penalty officially, but that an "unwritten
law" will limit the sentence to wartime traitors, in
mates who kill guards in prison escapes, and some
multiple murderers which is the way most non
capital punishment laws are written anyway.
14
Family Weekly, April 12, 1958