Best 146 quotes in «death penalty quotes» category

They found him guilty, and brother, if Maine had the death penalty, he would have done the airdance before that spring's crocuses poked their heads out of the dirt.

The primitive idea of justice is partly legalized revenge and partly expiation by sacrifice. It works out from both sides in the notion that two blacks make a white, and that when a wrong has been done, it should be paid for by an equivalent suffering. It seems to the Philistine majority a matter of course that this compensating suffering should be inflicted on the wrongdoer for the sake of its deterrent effect on other would-be wrongdoers; but a moment's reflection will shew that this utilitarian application corrupts the whole transaction. For example, the shedding of blood cannot be balanced by the shedding of guilty blood. Sacrificing a criminal to propitiate God for the murder of one of his righteous servants is like sacrificing a mangy sheep or an ox with the rinderpest: it calls down divine wrath instead of appeasing it. In doing it we offer God as a sacrifice the gratification of our own revenge and the protection of our own lives without cost to ourselves; and cost to ourselves is the essence of sacrifice and expiation.

The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.

[T]here are some human rights that are so deep that we can't negotiate them away. I mean people do heinous, terrible things. But there are basic human rights I believe that every human being has. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations says it for me. And it says there are two basic rights that can't be negotiated that government doesn't give for good behavior and doesn't take away for bad behavior. And it's the right not to be tortured and not to be killed. Because the flip side of this is that then when you say OK we're gonna turn over -- they truly have done heinous things, so now we will turn over to the government now the right to take their life. It involves other people in doing essentially the same kind of act." (PBS Frontline: Angel on Death Row)

As a member of the New York Senate from 1966 to 1989, I voted 12 times to establish the death penalty in New York... I regret my votes in favor of the death penalty.

A humane and generous concern for every individual, his health and his fulfillment, will do more to soothe the savage heart than the fear of state-inflicted death, which chiefly serves to remind us how close we remain to the jungle.

An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed in retaliation.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.

Capital punihsment: That without the Capital get the punishment.

Commute me, execute me. Don't drag it out.

Crime is redeemed by remorse, but not by a blow of the axe or slipknot. Blood has to be washed by tears but not by blood.

Eliminating the death penalty...will not hinder the prosecutorial capacity to seek, or the court's ability to impose, 'life without parole' sentences for serious, heinous crimes and criminals.

Conservatives should question how the death penalty actually works in order to stay true to small government, reduction in wasteful spending, and respect for human life.

Everyone is calm and collected but I am telling you something - I am not calm and I am not collected. It's a sick world out there.

Evidence of innocence is irrelevant!

For justice to have any meaning, it must also mean that no innocent person should ever be executed.

From the moment you are in that cell, when they tell you you're going ot be electrocuted, you contemplate it all the time. It never leaves your mind, and they never let it leave your mind.

Given the irreversibility of the death penalty, the possibility of a wrongful conviction can never be overstated.

God in His law requires the death penalty for homosexuals.

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.

Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.

I am against the death penalty.

I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man.

I am not anti-death penalty, but I'm damned sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed.

I am passionately opposed to the death penalty for anyone . . . I think, myself, that it is an obscenity . . .

I believe that no one should be executed, guilty or innocent. There are appropriate sanctions that protect society and punish wrongdoers without forcing us to stoop to the level of the least among us at his or her worst moment.

I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take life because He alone gives it . . .

As a Christian, as an individual, as a doctor, I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty.

Embracing a certain quotient of racial bias and discrimination against the poor is an inexorable aspect of supporting capital punishment. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment.

For me the hardest struggle in my faith life was the Catholic Church is against the death penalty.

For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it.

From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. ... I fell morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.

From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

I agree with Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that he would support the death penalty only when the infallibility of human judgment had been demonstrated.

I don't think there's any question that someday somebody who is innocent will be executed in this country again.

I don't think there's any words in the English language to explain what it's -what it's like to- to sit on Texas death row and your thoughts are laying on that gurney, convicted but innocent and being put to death.

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

If Moses is our lawgiver [Old Testament prophet given laws by God] at this time let us obey him, not in part only, but wholly, and put every Sabbath breaker, blasphemer, and adulterer to death.

If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we'd not only have fewer parking tickets, we'd also have much less driving.

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.

If you're stealing a television, that should not be the death penalty.

I had concluded when I was the prosecutor that I would vote against the death penalty if I were in the legislature but that I could ask for it when I was satisfied as to guilt.

I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished.

I have evolved to where I don't think the death penalty is effective.

If a Muslim becomes a non-Muslim and propagates his/her new religion, then it is as good as treason. There is a Death Penalty in Islam for such a person.

I'm for the death penalty, I'm pro-abortion, I'm pro-assisted suicide, I'm pro-regular suicide. Anything that'll get the traffic moving.

I'm excited we can be part of making the death penalty history.

I'm very glad that [the death penalty] hasn't existed for many years in the U.K.