“A Matter of Deep Personal Conscience”: The Canadian Death-Penalty Debate, 1957-1976 by Joel Kropf, B.A. (Hons.) A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of History Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario July 31,2007 © 2007 Joel Kropf Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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Abstract This thesis explores the public debate in Canada concerning the death penalty during the two decades preceding its abolition in 1976, with a particular focus upon the role that the prevailing moral culture of the day played in shaping debate rhetoric. Some of the best existing scholarship reveals that the instrumentally and procedurally focused aspects of many Canadians’ thinking in the third quarter of the century helped significantly to facilitate the eventual abolition of capital punishment. This study, however, highlights the wide range of ways in which debaters’ discourse, including discourse with an instrumentalist flavour, resulted from or conveyed their moral perspectives. Both the nature of debaters’ moral assumptions and the manner in which they were communicated suggest that moral ideas to which some Canadians sought to assign transcendent status possessed a weakened cultural credibility during this period, while moral perspectives animated by perceptions or expectations of progress exercised important cultural influence. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments Special thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Brian McKillop, for his patience and encouragement as I have meandered forward through this project over the past year. His nudges at an early stage to take the research in a slightly different direction than I had originally envisioned turned this into a more well-rounded and interesting project to work on. His unfailing willingness to take time to talk despite the busyness of chairing the Department was truly appreciated, and his sense of humour is always refreshing. Thanks to Mom and Dad for their tolerance and supportiveness as I’ve spent yet more time going to school and burying my nose in sometimes-narrow historical topics. This initial dip into graduate work has provided reminders of how much I have benefitted from their encouragement and prayers throughout my time in university. The financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada during the first year of this degree and research project is gratefully acknowledged, as is the support that the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program provided during year two. I owe thanks to each of the faculty members at Carleton from whom I’ve taken a class or for whom I’ve served as a TA; all have provided encouragement and important learning opportunities. The same is true of faculty at my undergraduate alma mater, Trinity Western University. Thanks are especially due to Dr. Bruce Shelvey, whose supportiveness at that stage did much to open up the further opportunities that have come along. Finally, the quotation that appears in the title of this thesis is not included anywhere in the actual body of the thesis, and so this is an appropriate place to acknowledge the source of the quote. The phrase “a matter of deep personal conscience” is drawn from page 4077 of House of Commons Debates for the Second Session of the Twenty-Seventh Parliament, from the transcription of federal Solicitor General Larry Pennell’s November 9,1967 speech on anti-death-penalty legislation. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Page A bstract.............................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. iv Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 Historical Context: Execution, Commutation, and Christmastime Robberies ..............3 The Historiography of Death-Penalty Debates .............................................................19 Methodology and Argument .........................................................................................23 Chapter 2: To Deter or Not To Deter: How That Became the Question ...................35 Catholic Thought and the Common Good ................................................................... 41 Retribution and Its Opponents ......................................................................................53 Chapter 3: Victims, Murderers, and the Rest of Us: Moral Evaluation Via Statements of Contrast and Assignment of Priority ............................................... 91 Retentionists, Victims, and Murderers..........................................................................95 Abolitionists, Murderers, and the Rest of Us ...............................................................108 Chapter 4: Responsibility, Psychology, Animality: Images of Human Nature in the Death-Penalty Debate............................................................................................... 124 Freedom and the Responsible Human ........................................................................131 Psychology, Psychiatry, and the Mysterious Human ..................................................146 Psychology, Animality, and the Impulsive Human .................................................... 154 Animality and the Dangerous/Wicked Human .......................................................... 170 Chapter 5: Permissiveness and Public Opinion: Interpretations of Social Trends and Citizens’ Attitudes in the Debates of the 1970s ..................................................... 183 Deterrence and Statistical Interpretations of Crime ................................................... 192 Rhetorical Interpretations of Crime: Permissiveness in Three Flavours ...................210 Permissiveness as Moral Decay.......................................................................... 212 Permissiveness and Violence ...............................................................................216 Permissiveness in Criminal Justice ..................................................................... 221 Pragmatic, Retributive, or Bloodthirsty? Interpretations of Retentionist Public iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Opinion............ Chapter 6: Conclusion Bibliography............... v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter 1: Introduction In 1976, Canadian legislators instituted a death-penalty-free version of the criminal code. A great deal of heated argument over the idea of abolishing the death penalty had occurred among parliamentarians and within the citizenry writ large at various points during the preceding twenty-five years. In debating capital punishment, Canadians addressed a variety of issues by means of a variety of rhetorical themes. Many of these issues and themes replicated the discourse that had emerged in death-penalty