But Dr. Sheppard's vindicator is under no illusion as to the conditions that this "lucky" evader of the electric chair will face if he is granted parole after ten years:"It will carry with it no right to resume his life as a physician.His privilege to practice medicine was blotted out with his conviction.He must all his life bear the stigma of parolee, subject to unceremonious return to confinement for life for the slightest misstep.More than this, he must live out his life as a convicted murderer.What does the moral conscience of today think it is doing?If such a man is a dangerous repeater of violent acts?What right has the state to let him loose after ten years?What is, in fact, the meaning of a "life sentence" that peters out long before life?Paroling looks suspiciously like an expression of social remores for the pain of incarceration , coupled with a wish to avoid "unfavorable publicity" by freeing a suspect.The man is let out when the fuss has died down; which would mean that he was not under lock and key for our protection at all.He was being punished, just a little -for so prison seems in the abolitionist's distorted view,and in the jury's and the prosecutor's whose "second-degree" murder suggests killing someone "just a little,"If, on the other hand, execution and life imprisonment are judged too severe and the accused is expected to be harmless hereafter- punishment being ruled out as illiberal
