"I have never pardoned a convicted criminal, and I never will. I cannot conscientiously exercise the 'gubernatorial prerogative' of riding roughshod over the mature, deliberate verdict of twelve sane, dispassionate men empowered to sift all testimony, and carefully guard for their guidance only indubitable evidence. The sanctity of jury verdicts has been so frequently violated by reckless use of pardoning power, that the value of blood-bought jury trial has dwindled into a mere mockery, an arena for spectacular professional jugglers. Ample legal machinery has long been provided for the rehearing and unbiased review of all criminal cases, whenever new witnesses or new and vital facts cast any doubt on the wisdom or justice of judge and jury. Courts of appeal and review should have power to correct wrongs that juries sometimes inflict upon the innocent, but the preposterous assumption of infallible prescience and 'altruistic clemency' by a President or a Governor is an ideal aspiration that I do not permit myself to indulge. This popular form of annulling jury verdicts is a fatal blow at the very foundation of penal jurisprudence; and the exasperating quibbles of subtle attorneys--the systematically delayed execution of verdicts and the too frequent veto of death sentences--all contribute to the deplorable increase of lynching. Pardon my taxing your patience for this enumeration of my reasons for preferring to leave justice to competent and unprejudiced courts." She threw out one hand with a repellent gesture. "Capital punishment is merely revengeful, judicial murder, utterly futile as a corrective method. Taking a second human life avails nothing as requital for the destruction of the first victim. It is indefensible cruelty in an age pluming itself on higher humanitarian standards." "Miss Lindsay, legal punitive statutes are not designed as retaliatory sacrifices to revenge, but as deterrents to crime, simply because dread of speedy retribution is the most powerful motive that can restrain the criminal masses. Maudlin sentimentality that just now inveighs against execution of judicial penal decrees, is a danger signal that points to public degeneracy in a people who regard mawkish sympathy with culprits as an advanced phase of civilization; and to whom the condonation of crime is more humanitarian than its extirpation." His slowly uttered words rang with the measured precision of a sculptor's chisel upon stone, and the inquisitorial eyes, no longer sombre, now glowed as they looked steadily into hers. For an instant a spasm of keen pain shivered the composure of her haughty face, and her voice rose into a bitter, half-strangled cry: