Every unnecessary delay in the case of a person condemned
to death is surely a kind of torture, and no American, of course, believes in torture. Execution by electricity was introduced, as we all know, for the simple reason that it was believed to be the speediest and most humane method of killing. As regards the United States Supreme Court, the inability to intervene was genuinely stated and maintained, though we may believe that it was done with reluctance. Every State is supreme in the administration of its own laws. Nobody who recalls the origin of the American Civil War, which began as a dispute about the carefully cherished State Rights, could underrate the dangers which any Federal authority sets up when it seems to transgress those rights. The fact, however, that the impotence of the United States Supreme Court was real intensifies the need for reform of criminal law in the various States.
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