Browsing Topic Best Death Penalty Quotes

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

The death penalty is used in such a blatantly racist way in the United States. There is no way that can be defended under any kind of definition of justice by anybody.

If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by our friends the murderers.

To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.

I Don’t Want To Live Long. I Would Rather Get The Death Penalty Than Spend The Rest Of My Life In Prison

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.

It really is essential that Congress pass legislation so that it fully ends the death penalty, codified it into law, and prevent a future president for reinstating it down the line.

The attorney general doesn’t favor one method or the other, he favors the death penalty.

The death penalty is barbaric. And I think we as a society need to come face-to-face with that. If we’re not willing to face up to the cruelty, we ought not to be doing it.

You know who doesn’t get the death penalty? Crazy people. That’s a defense in America. My client’s crazy. He doesn’t know what he did. Fine, then he doesn’t know we’re gonna kill him. If a guy’s that retard, you put him the electric chair and tell him it’s a ride.

I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: 1) Irreparability in the event of an error of justice, 2) Detrimental moral influence of the execution procedure on those who, whether directly or indirectly, have to do with the procedure.

I don’t believe in a lot of things from the Bronze Age, but an eye for an eye does make a sort of symmetrical sense to me. I really believe that if somebody takes a life, that [death penalty] is what they should get. I also think it’s a lot more humane than keeping people in a cage for the rest of their life.

The pain of losing a loved one by the horrible act of murder is not lessened by the horrible murder of another, not even when it is cloaked as ‘justice’ and state-sanctioned. It is only a delusion to believe that one’s pain is ended by making someone else feel pain.

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

I wonder if these death penalty proponents would still hold that it’s worth some risk of error if it were their loved one who was murdered by the state, though innocent.

When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.

The punishment of murder by death is contrary to reason, and to the order and happiness of society, and contrary to divine revelation.

It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.

This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?

I support guns and I support the death penalty. Half of my interviews are convincing liberals they’re not liberal.

The campaign against the death penalty has been – while a powerful campaign, its participants have been those who attend all of the vigils, a relatively small number of people.

The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.

I think capital punishment works great. Every killer you kill never kills again.

The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process. Where the death penalty persists, conditions for those awaiting execution are often horrifying, leading to aggravated suffering.

I support the death penalty. I think that it has to be administered not only fairly, with attention to things like DNA evidence, which I think should be used in all capital cases, but also with very careful attention. If the wrong guy is put to death, then that’s a double tragedy. Not only has an innocent person been executed but the real perpetrator of the crime has not been held accountable for it, and in some cases may be still at large. But I support the death penalty in the most heinous cases.

I think, when the African-American community understands my record on criminal justice, my record on economics, the agenda we’re bringing forth, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, dealing with the fact that we have more people in jail, shamefully, than any other country on Earth, that I am against the death penalty, Secretary Clinton is not, I think, as people become familiar with my ideas, we are going to do better and better.

The fact is that I’m also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who, during his campaign, once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions.

If the Pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millenia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture.

Vengeance does not subtract any numbers from the equation of murder; it only adds them.

If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That’s flexibility.

It is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree….I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.