quotations about capital punishment
How come life in prison doesn't mean life? Until it does, we're not ready to do away with the death penalty. Stop thinking in terms of "punishment" for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers.
JESSE VENTURA
I Ain't Got Time to Bleed
Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Fellowship of the Ring
From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
HARRY BLACKMUN
dissenting opinion, Callins v. James, 1994
I don't think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I don't think that's right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people's lives.
GEORGE W. BUSH
presidential debate, Oct. 17, 2000
Death row what a brother know
So quick to execute before they give a new trial
That's capital punishment American style
They've done it once they'll do it again
They'll execute an innocent man
TREE
"Get in the Way"
For more than 20 years, I have endeavored -- indeed, I have struggled -- along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor. Rather than continue to coddle the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.
HARRY BLACKMUN
dissenting opinion, Callins v. James, 1994
The burning of the house of the offender is not a permissible punishment for arson. The rape of the offender is not a permissible punishment of a rapist. Why should murder be a permissible punishment for murder?
ISMAIL MAHOMED
S v. Makwanyane, June 6, 1995
I can recall the punishment of detention. I can make reparation to the man upon whom I inflict corporal punishment. But once a man is killed, the punishment is beyond recall or reparation. God alone can take life, because He alone gives it.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India, November 8, 1925
Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.
JOHN GRISHAM
The Confession
How does killing someone prove that killing people is wrong?
R. J. ELLORY
Bad Signs
The racial terrorism of lynchings in many ways created the modern death penalty. America's embrace of speedy executions was, in part, an attempt to redirect the violent energies of lynching while ensuring white southerners that Black men would still pay the ultimate price.
BRYAN STEVENSON
Just Mercy
Since I was a law student, I have been against the death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against minorities, especially since they’re given no competent legal counsel defense in many cases. It’s a system that has to be perfect. You cannot execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole.
RALPH NADER
interview, Meet the Press, Jun. 25, 2000
Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Idiot
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists.
ALBERT CAMUS
Resistance
If murder is unjust of what importance is it whether its punishment by death be just or not?--nobody needs to incur it. Men are not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer.
AMBROSE BIERCE
A Cynic Looks at Life
Government ... can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.
HELEN PREJEAN
Dead Man Walking
That's how the city be, everybody gettin they hustle on
Judge singin' death penalty like it's his favorite f***in' song
BIG PUN
"Capital Punishment"
Some devout Christians are among the most fervent advocates of the death penalty, contradicting Jesus Christ and justifying their belief on an erroneous interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," their most likely response, overlooks the fact that this was promulgated by Moses as a limitation--a prohibition against taking both eyes or all of an offender's teeth in retribution.
JIMMY CARTER
Our Endangered Values
We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.
JOE ABERCROMBIE
Before They Are Hanged
"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," say the opponents of the death penalty, "is not justice; it is revenge and unworthy of a Christian civilization." It is exact justice: nobody can think of anything more accurately just than such punishments would be, whatever the motive in awarding them. Unfortunately such a system is not practicable, but he who denies its justice must deny also the justice of a bushel of corn for a bushel of corn, a dollar for a dollar, service for service. We can not undertake by such clumsy means as laws and courts to do to the criminal exactly what he has done to his victim, but to demand a life for a life is simple, practicable, expedient and (therefore) right.
AMBROSE BIERCE
A Cynic Looks at Life