"Disclaiming any approach to irreverence, permit me to remind you that the experiment of pardon was not repeated; and the severest penal code ever compiled came directly from the Divine lawgiver, whose chosen people demanded 'a life for a life.'"
"Hanging poor Amy's husband could not compensate Mrs. Hewitt for the loss of hers. The exaction of blood tax is a legal survival of savagery. Justice is not the sole divine attribute—mercy is coordinate. Try to remember that Talmudic prayer of Jehovah: 'Be it my will that my mercy overpower my justice!' As Governor, the issue of life or death lies in the hollow of your hand, and for the last time I beg of you not to listen to the barbarous prompting of a cruel revenge. Think of the awful responsibility of hurling an unprepared soul into eternity. Think of the blessed relief that only you can give to tortured, despairing human hearts who can look to no one but you for succor."
"I have never pardoned a convicted criminal, and I never will. I cannot conscientiously exercise the 'gubernatorial prerogative' of riding roughshod over the mature, deliberate verdict of twelve sane, dispassionate men empowered to sift all testimony, and carefully guard for their guidance only indubitable evidence. The sanctity of jury verdicts has been so frequently violated by reckless use of pardoning power, that the value of blood-bought jury trial has dwindled into a mere mockery, an arena for spectacular professional jugglers. Ample legal machinery has long been provided for the rehearing and unbiased review of all criminal cases, whenever new witnesses or new and vital facts cast any doubt on the wisdom or justice of judge and jury. Courts of appeal and review should have power to correct wrongs that juries sometimes inflict upon the innocent, but the preposterous assumption of infallible prescience and 'altruistic clemency' by a President or a Governor is an ideal aspiration that I do not permit myself to indulge. This popular form of annulling jury verdicts is a fatal blow at the very foundation of penal jurisprudence; and the exasperating quibbles of subtle attorneys—the systematically delayed execution of verdicts and the too frequent veto of death sentences—all contribute to the deplorable increase of lynching. Pardon my taxing your patience for this enumeration of my reasons for preferring to leave justice to competent and unprejudiced courts."
She threw out one hand with a repellent gesture.
"Capital punishment is merely revengeful, judicial murder, utterly futile as a corrective method. Taking a second human life avails nothing as requital for the destruction of the first victim. It is indefensible cruelty in an age pluming itself on higher humanitarian standards."
"Miss Lindsay, legal punitive statutes are not designed as retaliatory sacrifices to revenge, but as deterrents to crime, simply because dread of speedy retribution is the most powerful motive that can restrain the criminal masses. Maudlin sentimentality that just now inveighs against execution of judicial penal decrees, is a danger signal that points to public degeneracy in a people who regard mawkish sympathy with culprits as an advanced phase of civilization; and to whom the condonation of crime is more humanitarian than its extirpation."
His slowly uttered words rang with the measured precision of a sculptor's chisel upon stone, and the inquisitorial eyes, no longer sombre, now glowed as they looked steadily into hers. For an instant a spasm of keen pain shivered the composure of her haughty face, and her voice rose into a bitter, half-strangled cry:
"No mercy from you! I might as well pray to that growling sea yonder, watching hungrily for the next drowning wretch. I knew mine was a fool's errand, yet pity conquered repugnance, and it seemed so incredible, so monstrous that any man could coolly point to the gallows as sole answer to the heart-rending petition of an almost frantic family."
He pressed a hand over his brow, pushed back the thick, close-cut black hair, and after a moment he answered in an altered tone of profound and tender regret:
"My fellow monster, the sea, is spared after-pangs that are my portion. Do you imagine that any argument could avail to change my convictions of official duty, when in a fiery ordeal I felt compelled to deny the wailing wife who brought her pretty little ones to cry in their father's behalf? Try to realize what must have been the feelings of a man not wholly petrified, when he lifted from his office floor the kneeling form of an aged, white-haired woman who could only gasp between sobs: 'As you hope for mercy when your naked soul fronts God on His judgment seat, spare my son's life! Remember the mother who cradled you in her arms—for her sake, for God's sake, be merciful to me—save my boy from the gallows.' Miss Lindsay, the terrible curse is that the wages of sin are paid too often to the helpless innocent. I could not pardon Ronald Clinton, whose crime was deliberately planned murder, but learning of illness in his family, I sent a telegram at four o'clock to-day staying the execution of his sentence until restoration to health permits his mother and wife to spend a day with him in prison. Sometimes when I long for rest, the vision of those heart-broken women and two lovely children clinging to my knees, robs me of sleep."