There are, however, men who pursue crime as a vocation--as a profession--men who have been convicted again and again, and who will persist in using the liberty of intervals to prey upon the rights of others. What shall be done with these men and women?
Put one thousand hardened thieves on an island--compel them to produce what they eat and use--and I am almost certain that a large majority would be opposed to theft. Those who worked would not permit those who did not, to steal the result of their labor. In other words, self-preservation would be the dominant idea, and these men would instantly look upon the idlers as the enemies of their society.
Such a community would be self-supporting. Let women of the same class be put by themselves. Keep the sexes absolutely apart. Those who are beyond the power of reformation should not have the liberty to reproduce themselves. Those who cannot be reached by kindness--by justice--those who under no circumstances are willing to do their share, should be separated. They should dwell apart, and dying, should leave no heirs.
What shall be done with the slayers of their fellow-men--with murderers? Shall the nation take life?
It has been contended that the death penalty deters others--that it has far more terror than imprisonment for life. What is the effect of the example set by a nation? Is not the tendency to harden and degrade not only those who inflict and those who witness, but the entire community as well?
A few years ago a man was hanged in Alexandria, Virginia. One who witnessed the execution, on that very day, murdered a peddler in the Smithsonian grounds at Washington. He was tried and executed, and one who witnessed his hanging went home, and on the same day murdered his wife.
The tendency of the extreme penalty is to prevent conviction. In the presence of death it is easy for a jury to find a doubt. Technicalities become important, and absurdities, touched with mercy, have the appearance for a moment of being natural and logical. Honest and conscientious men dread a final and irrevocable step. If the penalty were imprisonment for life, the jury would feel that if any mistake were made it could be rectified; but where the penalty is death a mistake is fatal. A conscientious man takes into consideration the defects of human nature--the uncertainty of testimony, and the countless shadows that dim and darken the understanding, and refuses to find a verdict that, if wrong, cannot be righted.