Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/571

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. SOME time ago Sir James Mackintosh, a succeeded in persuading the real culprit (the most cool and dispassionate observer, Gregorio so expressly "exculpated by the declared that, taking a long period of time, judge) to come forward and acknowledge one innocent man was hanged in every three the crime. He was subsequently tried for years. The late Chief-Baron Kelly stated manslaughter and convicted, while Pelizzioni as the result of his experience, that from received a free pardon. Again, in 1877, two 1802 to 1840 no fewer than twenty-two men named Jackson and Greenwood were innocent men had been sentenced to death, tried at the Liverpool Assizes for a serious of whom seven were actually executed. offence. They were found guilty. The These terrible mistakes are not confined to judge expressed approval of the verdict, and England. Mittermaler refers to cases of a sentenced them to ten years' penal servitude. similar kind in Ireland, Italy, France, and Subsequently fresh facts came to light, and Germany. In comparatively recent years the men received a free pardon. Once more, there have been several striking instances of in 1879, one Habron was tried for the the fallibility of the most carefully construed murder of a policeman. He was found tribunals. In 1865, for instance, an Italian guilty and sentenced to death. An agitation named Pelizzioni ' was tried before Baron for a reprieve immediately followed. The Martin for the murder of a fellow-country sentence was commuted to penal servitude man in an affray at Saffron Hill. After an for life. Three years after, the notorious elaborate trial he was found guilty and sen Peace, just before his execution for the tenced to death. In passing sentence the murder of Dr. Dyson, confessed that he had judge took occasion to make the following committed the murder for which Habron remarks, which should always be remembered had been sentenced. With these incidents when the acumen begotten of a " sound legal fresh in our minds, let us turn once more to training" and long experience is relied on St. Giles and St. James, and listen to the as a safeguard against error: " In my judg indignant words of Douglas Jerrold : — ment, it was utterly impossible for the jury "Oh, that the ghosts of all the martyrs of to have come to any other conclusion. The the Old Bailey — and though our professions evidence was about the clearest and most of faith may make moral antiquarians stare, direct that, after a long course of experience it is our invincible belief that the Newgate in the administration of criminal justice, I Calendar has its black array of martyrs; have ever known. ... I am as satisfied as victims to ignorance, perverseness, preju I can be of anything that Gregorio did not dice; creatures doomed by the bigotry of inflict this wound, and that you were the the Council table, by the old haunting love person who did." The trial was over. The of blood as the best of cures for the worst of Home Secretary would most certainly, after ills, — oh, that the faces of all these could the judge's expression of opinion, never look from Newgate walls! That but for a have interfered. The date of execution was moment the men who stickle for the laws of fixed. Yet the unhappy prisoner was guilt death as for some sweet domestic privilege less of the crime, and it was only through might behold the grim mistake, the awful the exertions of a private individual that an sacrilegious blunder of the past, and seeing, innocent man was saved from the gallows. make amendments for the future." — The A fellow-countryman of his, a Mr. Negretti, Fortnightly Review.