The hangman and the electric chair - Part 2

The wrongful imprisonment of an innocent person is a grave miscarriage of justice. But the execution of an innocent person is an irrevocable miscarriage of justice. There is no reprieve from the grave.

In February 1955, British Home Secretary Chuter Ede revealed the weight of that responsibility when he addressed the House of Commons on the death penalty in the Timothy Evans case:

I was the Home Secretary who wrote on Evans' papers "the law must take its course".

I think that the Evans case shows, in spite of all that has been done since, that a mistake was possible and in the form of which a verdict was given in a particular case, a mistake was made.

I hope no future Home Secretary, in office or after he has left office, will ever have to feel that - although he did his best, although none would wish to accuse him of being either careless or inefficient - in fact he sent a man who was not guilty, as charged, to the gallows.