ESTONIA: Authorized Suicides

To Estonians, one of the most enlightened Baltic peoples, the electric chair seems crude. In principle they have no death penalty, but it is revived whenever Estonia is under martial law, as she has been since last March when a Fascist-Nazi Putsch was crushed. Last week pensive President Päts got to thinking that perhaps Estonia’s mode of execution can be improved.

Each Estonian condemned to death at Tallinn has been led out into the nearby forest by eight soldiers and there shot, always in a different part of the forest. To give condemned Estonians a choice, President Päts decreed last week as follows: “One hour before the scheduled time of the execution, the condemned shall be taken to a death cell, where the state prosecutor will read the death sentence and ask the prisoner whether he is willing to commit suicide. If the answer is in the affirmative, the prosecutor will hand the condemned a glass of poison—the kind of poison to be determined by the National Health Board. If the doomed man fails to take the poison within five minutes he will be hanged.”

Estonians abroad were profoundly shocked by this decree, not because President Päts had authorized suicide but because he had authorized hanging. “Astounding! Incredible!” they cried. “We have never heard of anyone being hanged in Estonia. They are always shot in the forest!”