Criminal Justice: Fewer Executions

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In Kentucky last week, the state leg slature overwhelmingly defeated a bill to abolish capital punishment; in Tennessee, a Memphis judge sentenced five Negroes to electrocution for raping a white girl. At the same time, the Justice Department announced an alltime low in U.S. executions: in 1965, only seven persons were put to death throughout the country.

The figures reflect a paradox in the U.S. attitude toward capital punishment. Last year four states virtually abolished the death sentence (New York, Iowa, Vermont, West Virginia), bringing the total of abolition states to 13. But while the rest of the country is still reluctant to discard the death sentence itself, end less appeals as well as commutations now commonly delay or prevent executions. As a result, the 1965 low stands in sharp contrast to the alltime recorded high in 1935, when the U.S. executed 199 persons for crimes ranging from rape to armed robbery to murder.

Moreover, for the first time, all seven 1965 executions involved convicted murderers. Only one of the seven murderers was a Negro; four died on the gallows in Kansas, including Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, the "heroes" of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.