Crime or Punishment
We Who Are About To Die. By David Lamson. (Scribners. 8s. 6d.) DAVID LAMSON, Sales Manager of Stanford University Press, U.S.A., was convicted of murdering his wife in September, 1988. He was condemned to death. While his appeal was pending, he spent thirteen Months in the Condemned Row of St. Quentin Prison. The Supreme Court of California reversed the decision unanimously and a second trial was held in February of this year. The jury could not agree, and Mr. Lamson is now await- , 'ng a third trial. Recently we had Ten Thousand Public Enemies, a book which dealt With professional lawbreakers and killers. The account it gave of the ease with which State police, warders, lawyers and politicians were squared-was so extraordinary that it ceased even to be shocking. This is the other side of the picture, an account of honest men, too poor or guileless to use corruption. The author confines his book to the period spent in the Condemned Row. It might be expected that he would prove bitter, ungenerous or apologetic, in the light of his experience. He is not. Over a year spent under the shadow of death has given him a calm detachment scarcely of this world. " What happened to me as an individual may be interesting, and I believe is of vast and rather frightening significance—since it might easily happen to you or to any one. But I think I am not the one to tell you about it. I am, perhaps, slightly biased." He does not blame the prison-officials, the judge,'or the policed He blames the society that allows them, and adds, with Lord Bryce, that people get the government they deserve. In the Condemned Row the question of guilty or innoCent is over. One prisoner revolts his fellows by continually protest- ing his innocence. The questions before them are : Shall I be commuted ? Reprieved ? Hanged this week or next? Mr. Lamson's portraits of the condemned men and his warder are brilliant, sympathetic and unsentimental. He has a similar theme to that of The Enormous Room, but whereas E. E. Cummings is trivial, viewing his imprisonment as an " experience," Mr. Lamson writes with the clarity of near-
death. . .
His chapter " Conversations With CriMinals " leads to the same conclusion as the rest of the book. Those familiar with crime can circumvent the laW, while the weak and ignorant are its victims.
j The publishers have appended the text of the decision of the Supreme Court, in reversing judgement on Mr. Lamson, ' The evidence is entirely circumstantial. If the state theory is correct, Mr. Lamson came behind his wife when she was standing up in the bath and hit her. four blows on the head with a heavy pipe. Any of these blows was hard enough to cause death instantly, so that he must have held her up to
inflict the other three. Though the book would stand without this adventitious interest, readers of detective fiction may like to play the detective in this case. The reviewer is certain of only one thing. Either David Lamson did not murder his wife, or he did not write this book.
, A. CALDER-MARSHALL.
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