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Show Legislation Lags Death In Utah Two bills which would modify existing capital punishment statutes in the state of Utah are currently being considered by the legislature. One, H. B. No. 129, sponsored by Rep. Felshaw King of Kaysville, would completely eliminate the death penalty from Utah lawbooks. Another, S. B. 54, sponsored by Sen. Thorpe Waddingham of Delta and Sen. Charles Welch Jr. of Salt Lake City, proposes to retain the death penalty only in the event of a conviction convic-tion of first degree murder when both judge and jury-concur jury-concur in the sentence of death. Under existing Utah statutes, the death penalty is automatic for first degree murder except upon recommendation of leiniency from the jury. The uncertain progress of both of these bills through the legislature has gone by almost unnoticed. Greater attention has been given to legislation relating to liquor, juvenile courts, sales tax and reapportionment. reapportion-ment. Last week a group of prominent 'Utahns opposed to capital punishment were invited to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on he King bill for complete com-plete abolition. The group, which included a Rabbi, a Unitarian minister, a Quaker and an LDS official of the University of Utah, was obliged to cool its heels for nearly an hour and a half while the committee heard a lengthy plea for juvenile court reorganization. Finally, Final-ly, at 10:15 a.m., the listless legislators, anxious for a break before the House convened at 10:30, allowed members mem-bers of the group a scant three minutes each to tell why they opposed capital punishment. Needless to say, H. B. 129 has not yet emerged from the commitfee. The attitude of the legislators reflects that of their constituents and the ambivalence of people in general toward capital punishment. Only when specific cases are being considered and life actually hangs in the balance bal-ance does the latent feeling of revulsion and inequity which most people harbor toward the state's legalized taking of human life come to the surface. Rhode Island and Maine, for example, abolished the death penalty shortly after persons were executed in both of these state for crimes they did not commit. Yet an issue so emotionally charged as that of capital punishment can be most soberly and objectively objective-ly evaluated when attention is directed to the general issue and its humanitarian and criminological implications implica-tions rather than diverted by the exigencies and passion of a particular case in point. Such a favorable moment, at least for the state of Utah, has arrived, now that the legislature is in session. The ample and convincing literature arguments against the death penalty can only be intimated here. Nationallp prominent persons such as California Governor Gov-ernor Edmund (Pat) Brown and Steve Allen oppose it. University officials and faculty members including Assistant Dean of Students Dr. Lowell L. Bennion, law professor Daniel J. Dykstra, philosophy professor Dr. Sterling M. McMurrin, letters and sciences Dean Sidney Sid-ney W. Angleman, languages professor Dr. Paul Wyler, music professor 'Dr. David A. Shand and Utah Symphony Sym-phony Maestro Maurice Abravanel supported an unsuccessful un-successful bill in the 1962 Utah legislature which would abolish the death penalty. The present King bill for complete abolition in Utah, meritorious as it is, has little chance of passing. But certainly, there can be no objection to S. B. 54, which would retain the death penalty only in first degree de-gree murder cases where its application is unanimously concurred in by judge and jury. In this latter bill were passed the onus of responsibility re-sponsibility for the "legalized" taking a human life would be shifted from the impersonal demands of an indiscriminate statue to the hearts and souls of judge and jury. Students and Utahns in general should urge the passage of Rep. Poulson's bill. It would be a step toward the total elimination of what is the very antithesis of criminal rehabilitation and the very negation of Judaeo-Christian teachings of love, brotherhood and respect of human life. And ultimately the death penalty must be totally done away with in Utah before, as in the case of Rhode Island and Main, it is too late. |
