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Reprieves, the curse of the system? |
Background.
The
concept of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy, i.e. reprieving people who had been
sentenced to death, dates back a very long way in English law. We are all subjects
of the reigning monarch and only he or she had the power of life or death over
us prior to 1837. The monarch sat with the Privy Council and disposed of
capital cases up to then. In
In the years up to 1861, there were many crimes which carried a mandatory death
sentence and because of that, there had to be a means of stopping the wholesale
judicial slaughter of minor criminals, if only to prevent a revolution.
(Excessive and cruel punishments were a major cause of the French Revolution)
An amazing 11,305 death sentences were passed in the decade 1826-1835 alone,
interestingly only 154 of these being for murder. Just 514 (4.54%) were carried
out. The next decade saw a sharp decline in both death sentences and
executions.
The table
below shows the situation as it progresses through the 19th century.
|
|
1800 - 1834 |
1835 - 1864 |
1865 - 1899 |
|||
|
Sentenced to death |
29808 |
851.66 p/a |
3014 |
100.47 p/a |
898 |
25.66 p/a |
|
Hanged for Murder |
523 |
14.9 p/a |
336 |
57.9% of sentenced |
485 |
54% of sentenced |
|
For other crimes |
2153 |
61.5 p/a |
27 |
1.1% of sentenced |
0 |
0 |
|
Total hanged |
2676 |
- |
363 |
- |
485 |
0 |
|
Reprieved |
27132 |
91.03% |
2651 |
90.54% |
413 |
46% |
You will
see that after 1835 the execution rate remained fairly stable and averaged 11.2
per annum for the rest of the century, as the number of capital crimes had been
dramatically reduced between 1812 and 1834. In practice, only murderers were sentenced
to death after 1861. During the 19th century, the population had risen from 9
million to 24 million.
Could one
really justify the public hanging of a young mother who had stolen food
(shoplifted) to feed her starving children? But it was the law, she had to be
sentenced to death. Thus the monarch, sitting with the Privy Council and in
some cases judges themselves, could commute the death sentences of those who
they didn't feel deserved them. From 1861, only 4 crimes continued to attract
the death sentence, but hanging remained the mandatory sentence for those
convicted of murder. Murder is generally seen as the most heinous crime a
person can commit, but many of those sentenced to hang for it were reprieved
where the murder was considered to be less heinous or where there were
mitigating circumstances.
The
20th century.
In
the first 58 years of the 20th century, everyone convicted of murder was still
automatically sentenced to death. This situation was slightly modified by The
Homicide Act of 1957 (see later). In the 66 years in England and Wales, where
the death sentence could still be passed, 1,485 people were sentenced to be
hanged by civil courts for murder and 755 were actually executed. The
remainder, effectively half of all these, were reprieved (49.2% in total).
1,340 men were to hear the dread words of the death sentence and 741 of them
were subsequently hanged, equating to 55.3%. In the case of women, 145 were
sentenced to death but only 14 hanged, a reprieve rate of just over 90%.
(Louisa Masset was hanged in 1900 but sentenced to death in 1899 and is
excluded from these statistics.) Click here to see a
graph showing the trends.
In the
condemned cell.
One
can imagine the emotional torture of being sentenced to death and transferred
to the Condemned Cell. The light is on 24/7 and you are guarded round the clock
by two or three warders.
You are weighed regularly and will probably realise why - so that they can
calculate the correct length of drop for you when the time comes. Your date
with the hangman has been set - normally for a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday,
3 weeks hence. Until the Governor comes to you and tells you that you have
either been reprieved or not, you live in a constant state of anxiety and fear.
Not knowing one's fate can be harder to cope with than actually knowing and
being able to prepare oneself for it.
I have no doubt too that a lot of those sentenced to death thought that being
hanged would still be death by slow strangulation. That it wasn't is almost
irrelevant - if that was how they perceived it. When prisoners were reprieved,
they had often to be transferred to the prison hospital for a time to recover
from their emotional problems and shock before they could be put into the
normal prison population.
An oft
overlooked fact is the stress on the warders of having to take part in the
death watch process. Typically a total of 8 to 10 men (or women, if the prisoner
was female) would have worked 8 hour shifts in the condemned cell. They had to
try and occupy their prisoner and to the extent they were allowed to, comfort
them and prevent them committing suicide. It was also their duty to record
everything the prisoner said, in case of a confession or partial admission of
guilt or the emergence of some new piece of evidence. Even where they may have
personally strongly expected a reprieve, they could not let the prisoner know
this and had to act at all times on the basis that their charge would be
hanged. Once the Home Secretary's decision was known, it was these warders who
had to deal with the prisoner's emotions - particularly when they had just been
told by the Governor that there was to be no reprieve and that they were to be
hanged in a few days time. Where there was a reprieve, it often came only a day
or two before the set execution date.
The
public perception.
Now
look at the situation from the point of view of the ordinary member of the
public who read a newspaper every day or listened carefully to the news on the
wireless (as the radio was known then). They would know of a trial for murder
(they were much shorter then and much more fully reported) and hear of the
guilty verdict and the death sentence. And yet time and time again they would
hear of a reprieve. What message did this send? A system in chaos, or that
couldn't make its mind up? Or a situation in which the penalty for murder
probably wouldn't really be death? The public's perception is, in reality, far
more important than the actual and often well hidden facts. If the death
penalty is supposed to deter, it must be seen to be carried out in all those
instances where the crime warrants it, save in the most exceptional
circumstances. Where there were genuine reasons for a reprieve, these should
have been clearly stated by the Home Office so that the ordinary person could
have understood them. This was not the case and the reasons for reprieving or
not reprieving were Official Secrets.
We do
know that people were hanged despite widespread public concern over their level
of guilt, e.g. Edith Thompson and Derek Bentley. In Edith Thompson's case, it
is rumoured that the Home Office felt that she had tried to murder her husband
previously and this was one of the reasons that she was not reprieved. If the
Home Office had such information, why was it not made public? Based upon the
information in the public domain at the time, her execution seemed unjust to
most people. It is hard to justify Derek Bentley's hanging by any way of
looking at it. Have a look at the full stories of these cases and see what you
think (Edith Thompson
& Derek Bentley).
Most
people have a strong and innate sense of justice. They have little sympathy for
child killers and multiple murderers and, certainly in the early part of the
20th century, supported the execution of "worst" murderers. But they
strongly opposed the hanging of people they saw as being guilty of far less
dreadful crimes. I think that this is still true today. There is often
discussion of capital punishment in the media and by the public following particularly
horrific murders. The Home Office never seemed capable of understanding public
opinion and allowed executions, such as Derek Bentley's on purely technical
grounds, while reprieving other people for apparently the flimsiest of reasons.
I am sure
you will agree that there is a huge difference between being hanged by the neck
until you are dead and serving, 10 years in prison which was the average for
those who were reprieved between 1900 and 1964. This difference seemed to be
totally lost on the Home Office however. Few of those reprieved served more
than 15 years of their "life sentences" actually in prison. It is
thought that no one served more than 20 years. Elizabeth Maude Jones, who with
her boyfriend was convicted of a very nasty robbery/murder, served just 9 years
of hers and that is not atypical. Even Donald Thomas, who shot dead a police
officer in London in 1948, served only 14 years. The length of time served was
a particularly relevant factor where, as was often the case, the condemned
person was quite young and had a great deal of potential life in front of them.
The average age of all of those sentenced to death in the 20th century was 33
years. It could be argued that death is less cruel than spending the rest of
one's life in prison which the term "life" sentence would imply and
as happens in America, which has life without parole, as an option to the death
penalty in most states. This is normally the punishment for those who have
their sentences commuted there.
The
reprieve process.
Although the trial judge had, by law, to pass the death sentence if the jury
found the prisoner guilty, he was able to make a recommendation to the Home
Secretary as to whether it should be carried out. Where a trial judge
recommended mercy, it was rarely ignored by the Home Office. In evidence to the
Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1949-1953), it was stated that there
were only 6 occasions between 1900 and 1949 when the judge's recommendation to
mercy was overruled.
It was not at all unusual for the jury to add a recommendation to mercy to
their guilty verdict but this was, in reality, completely irrelevant to the
final outcome.
From 1907
prisoners had the right of appeal against their conviction for murder, but not
against their death sentence. This appeal process ran in parallel to the Home
Office process outlined below. If they won their appeal, their murder
conviction was quashed. They were either freed or had their conviction reduced
to a lesser offence.
The Home
Office received the case papers after the trial, together with the
recommendation of the judge. Its officials began to prepare a report for
consideration by the Permanent Secretary and the Home Secretary. It was normal
for the prisoner to be examined by a panel of three Home Office psychiatrists
to determine if they were legally sane and competent to be hanged. This
psychiatric report was also sent to the Permanent Secretary and considered
along with the rest of the case papers. We can only surmise how decisions were
reached in individual cases and what advice was given to the Home Secretary, as
the reasons for reprieving or not reprieving a prisoner were always kept
secret. We can again only surmise as to the criteria Home Office officials used
in making their decisions. It would seem that murder by poisoning or the use of
a gun were seen as aggravating factors, as were loose sexual morals in the case
of female prisoners. Age could be a mitigating factor, especially in the case
of females. Physical injury or disability were also mitigating factors where
they might lead to problems with the execution. Any sign of mental illness
after sentence had been passed was usually a reason for reprieve. However,
obvious mental problems could not save the likes of John Christie who murdered
at least 7 women in the face of overwhelming public opinion. I am not trying to
impugn the actions of individual civil servants in individual cases - I am sure
that they acted in good faith and in accordance with the guidelines set down
for them. But taken in the round, the system was clearly unsatisfactory.
If there was to be no reprieve, the Home Secretary would write "the law
must take its course" on the file and the execution would then proceed,
otherwise the Home Secretary would exercise the Royal Prerogative of Mercy on
behalf of the monarch. This total lack of transparency in the system was always
a cause of problems and laid the Home Office wide open to accusations of
injustice.
Women
and the death penalty.
Between
1829 and 1899, 231 women were sentenced to hang in the British Isles including
Ireland. 101 of these women were executed, 97 for murder, one for attempted
murder, one for conspiracy to murder (in Ireland) and two for arson. Three
women were found insane and respited to Bedlam or Broadmoor. One was given a
free pardon and one committed suicide in the condemned cell. Over the period,
the reprieve rate was 56.3%. From 1861 to 1899, there were to be 119 women
given the death sentence of which 28 were to be hanged (all for murder) giving
a reprieve rate of 73.5%.
As stated
earlier, 145 women were sentenced to death for murder in England and Wales in
the 20th century (two others were sentenced to death for espionage and both
were reprieved).
Of these 145, no fewer than 131 were reprieved (90.3%) and only 14 hanged. This
raises the obvious question - why were so many women sentenced to death if
there was no intention of carrying out their sentences. One can, to a point,
understand the unwillingness of a male dominated judicial system to execute women,
except for the most dreadful crimes, but this was not what happened in
practice.
There are
at least 55 instances of women who murdered their infant children being
sentenced to death and then reprieved. I am willing to accept that these women
actually killed their children and so were, in that sense guilty, but few
people felt that these, often desperate, young women deserved to die for their
crime and indeed no woman was to hang for murdering her own infant in the 20th
century. The last execution for this crime took place in 1849. Yet it wasn't
until 1938, with an amendment to the Infanticide Act of 1922, that the law
finally caught up with practice and public opinion and understood post-natal depression
and the stigmatisation caused to a young woman of having a baby outside
marriage that was prevalent at the time. A further 33 women were sentenced to
death and reprieved for murdering their children. In at least two cases, these
murders could be described as mercy killings. Many of the remaining cases
concerned the murders of husbands and boyfriends. One woman had her conviction
for murdering her infant child quashed on appeal and one woman who murdered her
boyfriend, his father and one of his employees, was found insane after
sentencing and committed to Broadmoor (the secure hospital for the criminally
insane).
Sentenced
to death, reprieved and yet killed again.
Yes,
it did happen! There was at least one case where a man was reprieved to commit
murder again after his release on parole. Christopher Simcox was convicted of
his first murder on the 7th of July 1948 but was reprieved due to the temporary
suspension of the death penalty while the Royal Commission were examining it.
He was convicted of a second murder and again received the death sentence in
February 1964. Again he was reprieved. Another case is that of Donald Forbes who
was sentenced to death in 1958 for the murder of Allan Fisher, an
Perhaps
the most extraordinary case is that of John Thomas Straffen, however. Twenty
two year old Straffen had had a troubled childhood and was in a mental institution
from 1947 to February 1951 after assaulting a child. In August 1951, he
strangled two little girls but was found insane and sent to Broadmoor. In April
1952, he escaped and strangled Linda Bowyer before being recaptured the
following day. He was sentenced to hang for this murder and reprieved after his
appeal. Fortunately, he has not been released and is Britain's longest serving
prisoner. According to Home Office figures, at least 71 people have committed a
second murder after being released on licence from their first life sentence in
the last 35 years.
The
Homicide Act of 1957.
This
Act became law in March of 1957 and re-classified some forms of murder as non
capital which did reduce both the number of death sentences and reprieves. It
introduced the notion of diminished responsibility into English law. The
changes in the categorisation of homicides came about as a result of the report
of the 1949-1953 Royal Commission on Capital Punishment. From March 1948 to October
1948, 26 people were reprieved while this Royal Commission was being set up.
Between August 1955 and July 1957, everyone sentenced to death was reprieved,
amounting to 49 cases, while the government tried to frame the 1957 Homicide
Act. This Act was considered an unworkable shambles by almost everyone,
however, including the then prime minister.
Under the
Homicide Act of 1957 the 5 categories of murder for which the death sentence
was still to be mandatory were :
65 men
were sentenced to death after March 1957 and of these, 29 were hanged - a
reprieve rate of 44.6%. Surely the whole point of the Act was to eliminate
unfair and unnecessary death sentences and yet reprieves continued at only a
slightly reduced rate after it. If 39 of these men didn't deserve to die, why
were they sentenced to death in the first place? Age was not typically a bar to
execution of males in most cases, 18 of those hanged were under 25, two being
still teenagers. On the 9th of November 1965, the Murder (Abolition of Death
Penalty) Act suspended the death penalty for murder in the United Kingdom for a
period of 5 years, leading to the reprieve of the last 19 men sentenced to
death in 1965.
The first man to be sentenced under the 1957 Act was Ronald Patrick Dunbar for
a murder committed during the course of a robbery in 1957, and the last was David
Stephen Chapman on the 1st of November 1965 for a similar offence, both were
reprieved.
Only one woman was sentenced to death after the passing of this act. Mary
Wilson was dubbed by the Press as the "Widow of Windy Nook." She was reprieved in 1958, probably because
of her age, she was 66 years old, even though she had poisoned two husbands.
Under the provisions of the Act, she should have been executed, as the two
murders were committed on different occasions. Twenty one year old Maureen
Hanrahan, who with 23 year old Patrick Doran, was convicted of a robbery/murder
in early March of 1957 before the Act took effect. They were both reprieved
however. Similarly 3 men, Kenneth Smith, Vincent McTair and Peter Hurst,
although convicted after March 21st, were indicted for murder under the old
law.
Click here for a
graph showing the post 1957 situation.
A
short quiz.
See
how good you are at guessing the Home Office's decisions in 4 actual cases, all
from the Spring of 1955, under the stewardship of the same Home Secretary.
There was no question of guilt in any of them, by the way.
A 40 year
old woman was convicted of murdering her next door neighbour, an 86 year old
woman, by battering her to death with a shovel after a long running feud
between the two women. The case attracted virtually no publicity and it was
really only her husband who made any effort, on her behalf, to save her.
A 33 year
old army sergeant was convicted of murdering a colleague, whose wife he was
having an affair with at a British Army base in Germany. He had killed his
victim with a karate chop to the throat and tried to make the murder look like
a suicide by hanging. Afterwards, he married his victim's wife.
A 28 year
old man was convicted of the murder of his girlfriend, whom he had stabbed to
death in a fit of jealousy. He then cut his own throat and stabbed himself but
recovered from his injuries.
A 28 year
old woman shot her abusive boyfriend to death after he had refused to see her
over the Easter holiday. She had recently had a miscarriage having been punched
in the stomach by him.
So what
do you think happened to each of them? Were they reprieved or hanged? Answers
at the bottom of the page.
Conclusions.
Should people have only been sentenced to death where the murder(s) that
they had committed called for the ultimate punishment and that there was every
intention to follow through with execution?
Sadly, English law did not allow this. Unlike America, we had no degrees of
murder. Up to 1957, the jury were allowed 3 possible verdicts: guilty of
murder, guilty of manslaughter (against tightly defined rules) or not guilty.
In many instances, only the first verdict was possible. It is impossible to say
in how many cases the jury may have found the defendant guilty of murder, but
in the second degree, had they had the opportunity. I suspect it would have
happened quite frequently, as they often made a recommendation to mercy with
their guilty verdict.
A
reprieve rate of perhaps 3-5% may be acceptable because there will always be
special cases and exceptional circumstances in any judicial system. If it is
consistently higher than that, then surely the law needs to be changed to suit
current thinking rather than just carrying on imposing the death sentence,
regardless of public opinion and evolving standards. I am not arguing here that
95-97% of the 1,485 death sentences should have been carried out but rather
that 45% of them should never have been passed in the first place.
It is important that the public clearly understands the penalty for specific
crimes if they are expected to be deterred by this penalty. In reality, they
were faced with a confusing and contradictory system which was often seen as
unjust and unfair. Endless reprieves undermined respect for the legal system
and the administration of justice. Is it any wonder that the general public in
the 1950's and early 60's had no confidence in the administration of capital
punishment and, by extension, the judicial system? The abolition movement found
that they were increasingly "pushing at an open door" in respect of
public opinion.
In
conclusion, it could be said that a system of reprieves is no substitute for a
fair and just application of the death sentence.
For
further background reading, please click here to read my article on the
Abolition of Capital Punishment in Britain.
Answers
to the quiz.
Their
names, in order, were Mrs Sarah Lloyd, (reprieved and served just 7 years in
prison). Sgt. Emmett Dunne (reprieved, as Germany did not permit capital
punishment, even for soldiers from a foreign country. Bear in mind that the
crime was committed on a Sovereign military base and therefore, at least in
theory, a part of Britain. He served 11 years in prison.)
Alfred John Wayman (reprieved on the grounds that the throat wound might open
up if he was hanged and lead to an unpleasant mess, so instead he served 12
years of his life sentence.) and finally Ruth Ellis who was hanged. Click here for full details of her
case.
If you can square the actual punishments to their crimes and see any
proportionality in them, you are doing better than me!
Back to Contents page. Timeline of hanging in Britain. History of British judicial hanging.
The abolition of capital punishment.
