The Croydon murder appeal inspires rather searching reflections on the
whole question of capital punishment. Leave aside for the moment the question of whether it should or should not be inflicted in a case of open and palpable murder in which the evidence is incontestable. But here is a case of a totally different kind. Three men were alleged to be engaged in an attempted robbery, murder being admittedly in the mind of none of them. A house was entered, an old lady was gagged and she died of the handling she received. Two of them protested they never had anything to do with the affair at all. The third said he planned the robbery, but simply kept watch outside while the other two committed it. All three were found guilty by a jury, on evidence that was necessarily circumstantial, and all were condemned to death, since it is the law of England that if violence used in committing a felony might reasonably result, and does in fact result, in death, the crime. is murder. Vile though their brutality was, I for one should feel very unhappy at the idea of three men being hanged for a murder which none of them' meant to commit. As it is two of them will . not be -hanged, • not because any new light was thrown on the affair in the Court of Criminal Appeal, but because the Court found that by what it called a momentary slip the Old Bailey Judge had on one point given the jury a mistaken direction that might have told against the two in question. The third man, whose claim, neither established nor over- thrown, was that he never entered the house at all, remains under sentence of death. Most people, I imagine, would feel very disturbed if the sentence were carried out.. It is a clear case for the exercise of the Home Secretary's prerogative.
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