Kerrigan's Execution

John J. Kerrigan, convicted of the murder of a Cambridge policeman, will be electrocuted in Walpole State Prison on Thursday. Last week, the Massachusetts Executive Council decided to reject Governor Peabody's appeal for mercy. The execution will be the first in this state in sixteen years; the other death sentences since 1947 have all been commuted to life imprisonment.

The ritual murder of Kerrigan will accomplish nothing. It will not bring the dead policeman back to life. It will not lower the rate of such crimes in the future. And it will not even serve as a powerful object lesson or a proper titillation for those with sadistic impulses, because it will be done quickly and secretively, like the shameful thing it is.

In his statement to the Executive Council, Governor Peabody argued that there exists a reasonable doubt of Kerrigan's guilt, that conviction had been made on the basis of circumstantial evidence, and that two other publicized killings of policemen in recent days had influenced the case. The judgments of juries are and always have been human and imperfect acts; in Kerrigan's case, the element of doubt is simply more striking than it is in most murder cases. But the death penalty denies that there can be any doubt.

Few intelligent people any longer contend that executions serve any social purpose; indeed, many believe that they are antisocial, because they brutalize society and certify death as a legitimate method of dealing with people. It is clear that revenge is the principal motivation behind this, and most other, executions. "We can't continue to coddle those who break the laws," one Executive Council member told the press, as if a reluctance to kill were somehow a sign of effeminacy.

Governor Peabody plans to "explore every avenue" until the last moment. We hope he will win his fight against capital punishment--a fight he has carried on with consistent courage--soon enough to insure that this execution, if it must occur, will be the last in Massachusetts.