Chief Justice Rayner
Goddard would have been 140 years old if he was alive today. Let us present his
quotes in favor of capital punishment:
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QUOTE: “If our criminal law is to be respected, the public
conscience has to be satisfied, and it will not be satisfied if gross violence,
and sometimes bestial crime, is not punished in a way that will satisfy the
public. There are old people who go trembling to their doors at night.”
QUOTE: “They are sentenced
because it is society’s method of showing that if that conduct or those acts
are persisted in certain consequences which must be unpleasant and must be
punitive will result. I have never yet understood how you can make the criminal
law a deterrent unless it is also punitive. The two things seem to me to follow
one on the other.” [Speech in the House of Lords, 28 April 1948]
QUOTE: “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…” [Speech in the House of Lords, 28
April 1948]
QUOTE 4: “I know that in
uttering this sentiment I shall not have the sympathies of everyone but, in my
humble opinion, I believe that there are many, many cases where the murderer
should be destroyed.” [Speech in the House of Lords, 28 April 1948]
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Rayner Goddard (1877–1971)
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QUOTE: “The supreme crime
should carry the supreme penalty.”
[Speech in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
QUOTE: “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.”
[Speech in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
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Rayner Goddard (1877–1971)
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QUOTE: “Is
this the time to remove what rightly or wrongly the police and prison service
believe to be their main protection against attack? We have to remember that
our police are armed with a short baton, the only weapon they have against
these gunmen and other people who do not hesitate to shoot and take the lives
of policemen. If this (Death Penalty Abolition) bill passes I am sure it will
encourage resignation from the police forces and make recruitment more difficult.”
[Speech in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
QUOTE: Lord
Goddard recalled a brutal assault on a wife in which the accused said, “If it was not that I would swing for you, I would do you
in.”
He went on, “That is the sort of thing the death penalty prevents. I do
not want to joke in this matter, but would be the effect on such people if they
knew that they would be sent to a sanatorium or some other comfortable place if
they committed murder?”
[Speech in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
QUOTE: “I
believe the fear of the rope, as it is generally called among certain classes,
is a very great deterrent.”
[Speech in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
QUOTE: “If
this bill passed, judges will not be able to give any greater punishment for
deliberate murder than they can give now for burglary, for breaking into a
church (sacrilege), or for forging a will.”
[Speech in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
QUOTE: The Lord
Chief Justice recalled the case when a bandit caught after a chase in London
fired low at a young constable. “He fired low because
he knew what the consequences would be if he murdered the policeman. When he
was arrested his first question was, ‘Is the copper dead?’ That is what he was
afraid of…These instances make me say with all the earnestness I can command:
do not gamble with the lives of the police.” [Speech
in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
QUOTE: “Are these people to be kept alive?” [Speech in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
QUOTE: “I
should shrink from the very idea of saying that the sentence of murder should
be life imprisonment in the full sense.” [Speech
in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
QUOTE: “Your
lordships can be assured that the only people hung are those guilty of cruel,
deliberate murder without mitigation…I put my views strongly because from
experience, one gets to feel strong views in these matters and should not be
afraid to express them. When a man deliberately murders another he is
committing the supreme crime, and should pay the supreme penalty.” [Speech in the House of Lords, 10 July 1956]
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