Salt Lake Tribune | 1912-10-03 | Page 6 | Not a Bid for Notoriety

NOT A BID FOR NOTORIETY. We note in ihe Topeka State .lournal an editorial paragraph, which reads: Utah makes a stranpe bid for fame by permitlUifT Its convicted murderers, under sentence of -death, to choose- the routo by which they will travel to un- j known beyond. Our Kansas contemporary is evi-; dently" unaware of the facts and the reasons. The idea of "the Utah legislature legisla-ture in imposing the denth penalty is 0 that a murdorcr should literally hayp. his blood. .shed, in strict accordance accord-ance with the original Biblical docree. Accordingly, at the first the law provided pro-vided three modes for-the execution of the . death sentence: hanging, shooting, shoot-ing, nnd" beheading.' The hanging was least favored of these, and bohcading tho'moBtf.on the theory that the blood should be shed for the remission of the sin. A. number of years ago, however, beheading was taken out of the law; so that now we have onl' the hanging and the shooting. The shooting'is preferred pre-ferred to the hanging, because it sheds the blood of the murderer, and do may go as far as it will toward the remission remis-sion of his sins. Utah made no bid for notoriety in this matter, but simply undertook at an early period in its history to follow as closely as possible the scriptural injunction' in-junction' for tho shedding of blood, and it sccjrts a little lato to bo waking up some fifty or Bixty years after the en actment, with a chargo that Utah is. seeking notoriety through this form of execution