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Rayner
Goddard, Baron Goddard (10 April 1877 - 29 May 1971) was Lord Chief Justice of
England and Wales from 1946 to 1958 and known for his strict sentencing and
conservative views. He was nicknamed the 'Tiger' and
"Justice-in-a-jiffy" for his no-nonsense manner. He once dismissed
six appeals in one hour in 1957.
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[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.innertemplelibrary.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Profile-Lord_Goddard.pdf] |
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My sentiments are more
in favour of the victim than they are of the murderer. There is a tendency
nowadays when any matter of criminal law is discussed to think far more of the
criminal than his victim. - Chief Justice Rayner Goddard
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[PHOTO SOURCE: https://quozio.com/quote/srps7pw8hkp8/1148/my-sentiments-are-more-in-favour-of-the-victim-than-they] |
My sentiments are more in favour of the victim than they are of the murderer. There is a tendency nowadays when any matter of criminal law is discussed to think far more of the criminal than his victim. - Chief Justice Rayner Goddard
William Edgar Rayner Goddard, Baron
Goddard, GCB, PC (10 April 1877 – 29 May
1971) was Lord Chief Justice of England
from 1946 to 1958, known for his strict sentencing and mostly conservative
views despite being the first Lord Chief Justice to be appointed by a Labour
government, as well as the first to possess a law degree. Goddard's no-nonsense
reputation was reflected in a number of nicknames that
he acquired, these included: 'The Tiger', 'Justice-in-a-jiffy', and - from Winston
Churchill—'Lord God-damn'. He was considered one of the last Hanging
Judges.
In 1948 backbench pressure in the House of Commons forced through an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to the effect that capital punishment should be suspended for five years and all death sentences automatically commuted to life imprisonment. The Bill also sought to abolish judicial corporal punishment in both its then forms, the cat-o'-nine-tails and the birch. Goddard attacked the Bill in the House of Lords, making his maiden speech, saying he agreed with the abolition of, the "cat", but not birching, which he regarded as an effective punishment for young offenders. He also disagreed with the automatic commutation of death sentences, believing that it was contrary to the Bill of Rights.
In a debate, he once referred to a case he had tried of an agricultural labourer who had assaulted a jeweller; Goddard gave him a short two months' imprisonment and twelve strokes of the birch because "I was not then depriving the country of the services of a good agricultural labourer over the harvest". The suspension of capital punishment was reversed by 181 to 28, and a further amendment to retain the birch was also passed (though the Lords were later forced to give way on this issue). As the crime rate continued to rise, Goddard became convinced that the Criminal Justice Act 1948 was responsible as it was a 'Gangster's Charter'. He held a strong belief that punishment had to be punitive in order to be effective, a view also shared at the time by Lord Denning.
After retiring as Lord Chief Justice, Goddard continued to intervene occasionally in Lords debates and public speeches to put forward his views in favour of judicial corporal punishment. On 12 December 1960 he said in the House of Lords that the law was too much biased in favour of the criminal, as he was to assert to David Yallop nearly ten years later. Goddard also expressed his opposition to the legalisation of homosexual acts on 24 May 1965. His last-ever speech in the House of Lords was in April 1968 at the age of 91, praising the City of London's law courts.
However, despite stating his opposition to Bentley's execution, Goddard still expressed his strong support for the death penalty and asserted that the law was biased in favour of the criminal, as he did almost ten years before.
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We do not need
psychologists to tell us the simple truth that if you reward bad behaviour you
will get more of it. We should not be surprised that we are now engulfed in
crime. The offenders have taken their cue from us.
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- A Land Fit for
Criminals by David Fraser [PHOTO SOURCE: https://quozio.com/quote/hcsc78h4mskg/1129/we-do-not-need-psychologists-to-tell-us-the-simple-truth] https://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2019/11/unit-1012-book-club-land-fit-for.html |
LORD GODDARD
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If I may intervene for a few minutes in the debate, I do not propose to travel again over the ground that I covered on Second Reading. However, there are some matters which have arisen since then that I should like to bring before your Lordships to-day. In the first place, not having had the advantage of knowing the poor opinion which the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, held of the Judges, I ventured to take their opinion. I had an opportunity to find out what their views on this question were. There are twenty Judges of the King's Bench Division, and I am bound to say that I thought and think that they do represent a fair cross-section of the community. Quite apart from their learning and experience, they are men of varying shades of political and social thought, and they do not all belong to the same denomination of religious thought. After all, the Judges do come face to face with the murderers and therefore have an opportunity of forming an opinion on the sort of subjects with which your Lordships' House are now concerned.
The noble Viscount told us that the Judges did not know the houses from which the murderers came or their environment, or even if they were born during an air raid. I imagine that he was thinking of World War I, because I have not yet met a murderer aged eight years. But I take leave, with all respect, to tell him that these men come from every walk of life, and from every class of home. We know that because we have to deal with them. I had some difficulty in following his argument on this point. If he means that we were not to punish any man because of his unfortunate or unhappy environment I can follow him, but I cannot agree with him. I should rather put to your Lordships that murder is a crime sui generis—it stands by itself; and the man who commits the supreme crime should pay the supreme penalty.
Whilst mentioning the Judges, may I briefly deal with a question which has already been touched upon by the noble Viscount who has just addressed your Lordships? At the present moment, the law of the land is that a person convicted of murder should suffer death as a felon. I have always understood that the honourable tradition in England is, that if one does not like a law one does one's best to get rid of it; but one obeys it until it is altered. At the moment, when a man is convicted of murder, a Judge has no option but to pass sentence of death. Trials for murder are going on now. There have been several such trials since the Second Reading debate, and the Judges are out on the circuits now. Every Judge has to pass sentence of death, because that is the only sentence which the law of to-day, which will remain the law until it is altered, requires.
Side by side with that law the Crown, by the Common Law of the Realm, has always possessed the prerogative of mercy, which is now exercised on the advice of a responsible Minister. I say without fear of contradiction that, certainly for the last 150 years, and probably for longer, that prerogative has never been exercised except with regard to the particular facts of the particular case. It was therefore with some surprise that I not only saw announced in the newspapers but received official notice from the Home Secretary—and by this I can answer the question which Lord Simon put a moment ago—that he proposed in future to reprieve all murderers, and suggested to me what I had already been informed of through the announcement in the newspapers before I received his letter—namely, that I should suggest to the Judges an alteration in the form of the death sentence. It was in fact an announcement to the world that not only would those then under sentence of death be reprieved, but that all future murderers would be reprieved.
I speak merely as a lawyer, but Judges are, after all, concerned with the constitutional law of this Realm. I venture to submit to your Lordships, I hope without risk of being accused of exaggeration, that that is exercising a dispensing power which has been repudiated by Parliament ever since the days of James II. Such a situation is enshrined, in fact, in the Bill of Rights. Action of this sort is declared to be illegal. And if this is not altering the law by administrative action, I do not know what is. In view of what we were told, I thought it right to suggest to my brother Judges that we should alter the traditional form of the death sentence, and especially that we should omit from it that prayer which has accompanied the death sentence for centuries—namely, that the Lord may have mercy on the prisoner's soul; for apparently the Home Secretary has decided to anticipate the Almighty. We could not pass that sentence when we were told that every murderer, in any circumstances, would be reprieved.
There have come to my personal knowledge four cases where the reprieve has been given in accordance with what is now to be the general policy. First, there is the Staines murder, where a gipsy murdered an old man who had stupidly displayed a bundle of notes in a public-house. The gipsy (as he said) accompanied him home, murdered him on the Common and threw his body into a ditch. Secondly, there was the case that my noble friend referred to a moment ago—that of the steward who murdered the young woman on a liner and threw her body into a shark-infested sea. Thirdly, there is the case of a police constable who was shot by a burglar; and then there was the case of the unfortunate old watchman who was battered to death in a cinema. These men are now all reprieved. What is to happen if this clause does not become law? Are these reprieves to continue? This clause is yet not law; it may never be law—I certainly hope it will never be law. And if it is not, it seems to me that murderers in the future may have a legitimate grievance. They may say, "Why is it that I am now to be hanged? Why is the law to be put into force against me when, before the law was altered and when the law was that murderers should be hanged, these people, who it was never suggested were insane or anything of that sort, should be let off the capital sentence?"
It is not too much to say—and I say this with due sense of its importance—that this raises a most important constitutional issue.
I want now to turn to another point. Whether the present outbreak of crime is due merely to the war, or whether it is due to a general slackening in discipline and sense of responsibility, is a matter upon which perhaps there is room for more than one opinion. I think it is due to both causes. What is not open to question is, that never in the last hundred years has there been such an outbreak of crimes of violence, accompanied, usually, by lethal weapons. It may be comforting to say "But that is the result of the war; that is the result of putting all these people into the Army," and so forth. Let me just read what the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, said yesterday:
"You cannot have commandos, people smearing themselves with blood and dancing about with bayonets, without degrading the moral sense and reducing respect for human life."
In justice to the commandos, I want to say that, in the two and a half years that I have held my present office—which involves my being President of the Court of Criminal Appeal—I suppose that at a low estimate, I have had at least 500 or 600 cases before me. Naturally, many of those, perhaps the majority, have had some service; in the Army during the last war; but until last Monday week not a single case of a commando had ever come before my court. That is not only my own experience. I was told the same thing by one of His Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary——
VISCOUNT STANSGATE
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Will the
noble Lord excuse my interruption? He misunderstood me. I was not attacking the
Services. I was referring to what, in my opinion, was the general degradation
of character which came from that type of training.
If the death penalty was not imposed then "wrong really has finally
totally triumphed over right and all civilised society, all we hold dear, is
the loser."
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LORD GODDARD
I was
going to give the inference that I drew from that matter. The commandos, no
doubt, were hand-picked men, but they were subjected to a strict and rigorous
discipline. I believe that they have profited by that discipline, and have
brought it into their lives and, therefore, before Lord Stansgate interposed, I
was going to say that I thought it was not true to say this outbreak of violence
was due to the people becoming accustomed to the use of lethal weapons. It was
due primarily to the breakdown in discipline, which, I think it is right to
say, pervades all classes of the community at the present time.
I have told your Lordships what I
feel about that point, and I wish now to deal with two arguments which were
adduced yesterday, at least one of which bears on what I have just been saying.
The noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, in a speech to which I listened with the greatest
attention, pressed for this experimental period. I am bound to say—and I think
it was said by some of your Lordships in the debate on the Second Reading—that
if once you abolish the death penalty it will be impossible to re-impose it.
Certainly, nothing except some great political assassination, I think, would
move Parliament to re-impose the death penalty once it had been removed. The
difficulty, I believe, would be too great. Of course, I may be wrong. But I do
say that if you are going to make the experiment, this is not the time to make
it. Can any member of your Lordships' House pick up his newspaper any morning
without seeing a report of some crime of violence—all too often the crime of
murder? The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, referred to what he saw in
the paper to-day—a report about the battering to death in her house of a woman
of eighty-nine. If he had turned to another page he would have seen a
statement—it may not turn out to be true, but, apparently, it is true—about the
police finding two ladies bound and gagged in a flat at South Kensington. These
are the sort of things that are going on at the present time. Is it a safe time
or a proper time to carry out an experiment which must mean gambling with the
lives of people?
I agree with Lord Merthyr cordially on one point. He said that it would make juries more ready to convict of the crime of murder. I think he is quite right in that respect—I think they would be more ready. Once they know that there is little distinction, if any, between murder and manslaughter, they will not give their anxious and careful attention to cases as they do at the present time. Judges, as I have said, are already out on circuit. Murder trials are proceeding at the present moment, and reports have been sent to me. Before I left to come here to-day my brother Birkett mentioned one matter to me which seemed to indicate that already, because of this announcement by the Home Secretary—for there is no other reason—juries seem to be losing a sense of the great responsibility which they felt, and to which the noble and learned Viscount referred a few moments ago.
In a case at Worcester Assizes the other day a man was charged with the murder of his wife. There was a good deal to be said on his behalf on the ground of provocation. Counsel for the Crown in his speech opening the case indicated to the jury that they could return a verdict of manslaughter. The learned Judge, summing up, left the question of manslaughter as well as the question of murder to the jury. In less than ten minutes after retiring, the jury were back with a verdict of murder. That could never have happened, I believe, if it had not been for this announcement about reprieve. In all my years at the Bar or on the Bench I have never known a jury to come back, certainly in less than half an hour—and generally it has been nearer an hour-and-a-half—in a case where the question of murder or manslaughter had to be considered. Indeed, if this clause is to become law, I seriously believe that we ought to consider whether or not to abolish the distinction between murder and anslaughter, make the offence one of culpable homicide, and leave the sentence to the court. That is a suggestion which I throw out. As things are at present, I am certain that juries will not have the anxious sense of responsibility in saying whether a conviction should be for the supreme crime or for the lesser crime of manslaughter. Some individuals who might possibly be convicted of the lesser crime I believe will be convicted of the more serious one.
The other matter to which I would like to refer was the matter dealt with on the Second Reading by the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Truro, and yesterday, to some extent, by the most reverend Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury. And may I take this opportunity of saying a word of apology to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, for I fear that he may have thought that a sentence I used at the opening of my speech on the Second Reading—it was perhaps due to a little nervousness which I felt on addressing your Lordships for the first time—sounded discourteous to him. I am conscious that it was, perhaps, an ill-timed pleasantry and that I should not have said it. I said that I was not going to follow him in all his bloodthirsty suggestions. I did not mean it in any derogatory sense, and I desire to apologise to him for having put it in that way.
The right reverend Prelate pointed out, as did the most reverend Primate yesterday, that there are many cases such as attempted murders which are even worse than the actual murder which carries the capital sentence. I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. I also agree that it does not seem logical that if one man fires a revolver at another and kills him he should be sentenced to death, while if another man does exactly the same thing but, by reason of some miracle of surgical skill, the victim's life is saved, the man who did the shooting should be charged only with the lesser offence, which does not carry the death penalty. The answer, I think, is this. Principles of law are not always ideally just and ideally logical. But a line has to be drawn somewhere. The law does take account—some great jurists think it takes too much account—of consequences. But, as I say, a line must be drawn somewhere. I believe that, as a good practical method, you can draw it only by saying that murder shall carry the charge for one offence, while attempted murder shall carry the charge for a less serious offence. It may be that some people honestly believe that other offences beside murder should carry the capital sentence. Many people think that second and third convictions for rapes of children—which, unhappily, are not unknown—are quite as bad and even worse than the actual taking of human life, it may be in a moment of passion. But it is too late to consider that matter now. I most heartily agree with many of the remarks made from the Episcopal Bench on that point, but I think we have to take the law in that respect as we find it, and that it cannot be altered.
I desire to say only one further word in conclusion, and it is this. I have heard and seen reports from various quarters that there may be an effort at some future stage of the Bill to effect a compromise. I hope that your Lordships will stand firm in accepting this Amendment and rejecting the clause, and, if you do, I am bound to say that I hope you will also stand firm in rejecting a compromise. I say that for this reason. I believe, with all my heart, that our present system, under which the Secretary of State reviews every case which comes before him, has worked well in the past and will work well in the future. The noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, made a suggestion yesterday that it might be desirable for the Secretary of State to call in two or three Privy Councillors to assist him in his arduous and difficult task. As Lord Oaksey pointed out yesterday, he can now call in every one of his permanent officials. And he does call in his permanent officials. I believe that Lord Samuel's suggestion is a very valuable one. But, however experienced those people are, however high-minded, however anxious to do that which is right (as they always are) if you always consult the same officials, there is perhaps a danger—I only say "perhaps"—of the matter becoming in some way standardised. It might be better if the Home Secretary consulted—as he could without statutory permission—other persons, such as the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, suggested.
I would remind your Lordships that down to the reign of George IV the Privy Council met every month to consider what was then called the Recorder's Report. This Report was sent from the Old Bailey to the King and contained the names of prisoners who had been sentenced to death, recommendations for respite and recommendations for those left for execution. It was considered by the King in conjunction with his Privy Council before the death warrants were signed. Exactly when that system came to an end I do not know, but it certainly was before the reign of Queen Victoria. Perhaps when the Queen came to the throne it was not thought right for a young woman to undertake that duty, which has ever since devolved on the Secretary of State and has been discharged, if it is not impertinent to say so, most admirably. That ought to continue. It is better than any form of compromise.
And what are the forms of compromise? Are we to say that murderers of a police officer or of a prison warder shall be punished by death, but not others? While I would do everything I could to protect prison and police officers, the lives of others of His Majesty s liege subjects are at least as valuable as theirs. Or are murders to be divided into first degree and second degree, as has been done in some of the States? I do not envy the task of a Judge who has to sum up on such a matter as that, or of a jury who have to come to a conclusion. I know that in at least one State in America, in which people are not slow, I am told, in "doing a quick draw," there has not been a conviction for murder in the first degree since the law was altered to include first and second degree murders. I think it is much better to leave the law as it is. I am no believer in the maxim vox populi vox dei. I agree with a good deal which is said about that. But I also think that if the criminal law of this country is to be respected, it must be in accordance with public opinion.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1948-06-02/debates/f533c9ec-95d5-44e9-b5ac-45238a04fa3f/CriminalJusticeBill
“There is one other consideration which I believe
should never be overlooked. If the criminal law of this country is to be
respected, it must be in accordance with public opinion, and public opinion
must support it. That goes very nearly to the root of this question of capital
punishment. I cannot believe or the public opinion (or would I rather call it
the public conscience) of this country will tolerate that persons who
deliberately condemn others to painful and, it may be, lingering deaths should
be allow to live…”
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[Speech
in the House of Lords, 28 April 1948] |
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