MERCY AND MURDER.
JDRIES, fortunately, have not yet made it a custom to add to a verdict of murder the rider "during temporary insanity." But the public, or at all events a considerable section of it, seem to have decided that the verdict of a jury of twelve men and the sentence of the Judge, bolding out no hope for the condemned criminal, need not be, and are not, the last word in a case of homicide. Nine weeks ago, on January 24th, &brutal and premeditated murder was committed in broad daylight in a London shop. The murderer afterwards turned his weapon on himself, but failed to take his life; he was removed to hospital, and in course of time recovered; he was tried and condemned to death, according to the law of the land ; and already the columns of the newspapers are fall of "pleas for mercy." They will be disregarded, but they belong in a significant manner to the times in which we live.
Such an outcry for mercy was probably to be expected, for public opinion, which has altered its view of suicide until self- murder has become one of the rarest of juries' verdicts, has so far softened, or rotted, on the question of capital punish- ment that the death penalty is accepted by the whole com- munity as right and inevitable only in the case of the most hideous and diabolical of crimes. Pity of pain has occupied the public mind so strongly that nearly any excuse is grasped at, almost seized, in order to save the horror of inflicting it. The woman was beautiful, and therefore her hatred must be for- given; the man was jealous, and therefore there should be sympathy for his fury ; perhaps only devilish cruelty can find no defender among the tender-hearted. It is well to be tender-hearted, but an excess of sentimental softness may lead to a terribly wrong chain of reasoning. Look at the plain facts of what has been from first to last a perfectly straightforward case, with only one broad question which had to be answered. Horace George Rayner was born in 1879, his mother being Emily Turner, who was then living with a man named Rayner. Four years later Emily Turner's sister Louisa became the mistress of Mr. William Whiteley, but, according to the evidence given, Rayner was in no other way whatever connected with the Whiteley family. He was not Mr. Whiteley's son. When he grew to be a man, however, he seems to have brooded a good deal over his aunt's relations with Mr. Whiteley, and on several occasions talked to others as if he had expectations of money coming to him. In January last he was in London, and desperately hard pressed for means of living. He seems to have decided to attempt to obtain money from Mr. Whiteley, with or without threatening him does not much matter ; in any case, he took with him a heavily loaded revolver, and secured admittance to Mr. Whiteley's private room by a trick ; then, failing to obtain what he wanted, he shot his victim dead, and did his best to kill himself afterwards. If any murder was ever deliberate, this was; but for further and complete proof, there was found upon the murderer's person a slip of paper containing the statement that "William Whiteley is my father, and has- as brought
brought upon himself and me a double fatality by reason of his refusals made personally." The plain English of that is a confession of murder and blackmail mixed with lying. Only one question remained to be asked, and that was whether the murderer was sane at the time when he fired the revolver. The doctors decided that he was not insane, and the Lord Chief Justice directed the jury to dismiss any question of sanity or insanity from their minds.
On what grounds, then, in a case such as this, can it be urged that the capital sentence should not he carried out? Is it to be put forward in extenuation that the criminal has from childhood breathed a bad atmosphere, that his tendency to crime is the result of his descent from a drunken parent or grand-parent? That could only be a sufficient plea if it could be proved that the man's mind was permanently deranged in consequence; but no doctor, in this case, would pronounce the prisoner insane. Is it next to be urged that because a man is descended from tainted parents, he shall be free to commit offences for which men of sound parentage would be punished? That is no argument. Another, and to the unthinking a more specious plea, is that the murderer deserves pity because he has come so near to death and yet must die again," Is it right that we should nurse a man back from the point of death to health and strength again only for the purpose of passing a death sentence on him the moment he recovers ? " That assumes too much, for Rayner was not nursed back to life for the express purpose of being condemned to death. It was absolutely necessary that his life should be preserved if possible. In the first place, even if he was a murderer, he was still entitled to a fair trial. He must be assumed innocent until it was proved that he was guilty. There might have been extenuating circumstances which would be held by the Court to justify mitigation of the extreme penalty. Imagine what would happen if, in a similar ease of apparently deliberate murder and attempted suicide, the assassin were allowed to die, and then it were found that the murdered man himself had woven some terrible net round the man who killed him. What would be the consequences if it came to be known that the doctors had allowed the would-be suicide to die? But all that is beyond imagination. Those who chafe at contemplating the supreme duty of citizens to the community, or who, out of weakness or natural disinclination to think out questions to their final issue, urge vaguely that "the doctors might have let the wretched creature die as he wanted to," forget the intolerable burden which they suggest 'others should bear. Are the doctors to be the judges as to whether a wounded man has committed murder They would not undertake that responsibility, nor would a community which rightly forbids euthanasia allow them to assume it. The stark and simple fact is that it is the duty, as it is the ennobling privilege, of the physician and the surgeon to save life, not to lose it ; and in all circumstances, and under every condition of living, to do what in them lies to preserve or to restore the health of any human being entrusted to their care. No other state of things is possible, and to urge that a man ought not to be executed because the doctors have once saved him from death by his own hand is mere confusion of thinking.
There remains, therefore, nothing but a question of extending mercy. Let us be very sure what we mean when we talk in the same breath of mercy and murder. Mercy, we must ask, to whom ? It can be forgotten, as this case shows plainly enough, that there are other purposes in exacting supreme punishment than the mere ending of the life of the criminal. The criminal is punished, not only because he has committed crime, but in order that crime may not be committed by others. Is it merciful, then, to others that his punishment should be reduced ? Is it merciful to those who, because of any peculiarity in their position in the community, stand- most in need of the protection afforded by the community against the savage assault of dangerous criminals, that such protection should be diminished ? It cannot be, though that is not the greatest question involved. Is it merciful, then, to the potential criminal himself that the dangers he runs by tranegreasing the law should be removed ? When a man knows that the punishment which will follow crime is not only swift, but absolutely certain, be cannot but shrink from consequences which otherwise he might think were worth risking. He may be, as it has been 'urged on behalf of this man Rayner, a degenerate; he may be standing on the brink of the precipice,- just not.overbalimeed by greed,
or lust, or hate. If the other man dies, and he will still live, tinder whatever conditions, what else matters? But if he cannot say to himself "I may escape," if be knows that he must, with absolute certainty, die a more dreadful death than hie victim ? It may he, rather it Must be, that such a thought has often prevented crime being committed. It has strengthened, even if only by a threat, the moral fibre of a weak man ; would it be mercy to remove that fountain of strength ? Last, and greatest question of all, where is mercy to be sought for the weak who have fallen ? Are we so certain of what mercy means when we give back life to a fellow-man who, under the law of shedding blood, has forfeited it? There is such a right as the right of expiation, and it can be held by God-fearing. men that it is in part by expiation that a man may reach that supreme mercy which it is not man's to bestow.
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