Quotes & Sayings About Capital Punishment

The (capital punishment) controversy passes the anarch by. For him, the linking of death and punishment is absurd. In this respect, he is closer to the wrongdoer than to the judge, for the high-ranking culprit who is condemned to death is not prepared to acknowledge his sentence as atonement; rather, he sees his guilt in his own inadequacy. Thus, he recognizes himself not as a moral but as a tragic person. — Ernst Junger

Isaac Newton was being called on to defend to quality of moneys as master of the Royal Mint. He had to face the problem of the debasement of the currency through the practice of shaving some of the silver off silver coins to make more coins (an easy way to make money, when you think about it). Convicted coin-clippers were publicly hung at Tyburn - offences against God were to be forgiven, but offences against capital and mammon deserved capital punishment! — David Harvey

Speaking of these attitudes turned Temple's mind to a parallel: "I find a very high correlation," she said, "between the way animals are treated and the handicapped. ... Georgia is a snake pit - they treat [handicapped people] worse than animals. ... Capital-punishment states are the worst animal states and the worst for the handicapped. — Oliver Sacks

He was opposed to capital punishment - "institutionalized sadism," he termed it - and in favor of prison reforms that would emphasize rehabilitation. His opinions were generally conservative, however, and he did not subscribe to the fashionable view of the sixties that criminals were victims of society. — Gerald Clarke

We don't know if capital punishment is a deterrent, but we know that men we execute will not murder again. — Mario Puzo

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. — Bryan Stevenson

Bertrand Russell used to employ the method of evidence against interest; in other words of deciding that a critique of capital punishment, say, carried more weight if it came from a prison governor. (My friend John O'Sullivan puts it like this: If the pope says he believes in God, he's only doing his job; if he says he doesn't believe in God, he may be on to something.) — Christopher Hitchens

When in Gregg v. Georgia the Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to capital punishment, this endorsement was premised on the promise that capital punishment would be administered with fairness and justice. Instead, the promise has become a cruel and empty mockery. If not remedied, the scandalous state of our present system of capital punishment will cast a pall of shame over our society for years to come. We cannot let it continue. — Thurgood Marshall

My own view on capital punishment is that it is morally justified, but that the government is often so inept and corrupt that innocent people might die as a result. Thus, I personally oppose capital punishment. — Ed Crane

Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer. But imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master. — Jesse Jackson

It is significant that, as innocent babies are killed, and capital punishment is withheld from their murderers, the same men who plead for the murderer's life also demand the "right" to abortion. Usually, the same picketers that carry a sign one day, "Abolish Capital Punishment," also carry "Legalize Abortion" another day. When this is called to their attention, their answer is, "There is no contradiction involved." They are right: the thesis is "condemn the innocent and free the guilty. — Rousas John Rushdoony

I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about - nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund-raiser) because I don't want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern - legal and social equality for gay people worldwide. — Ian McKellen

I don't agree with capital punishment as it is now, because too often mistakes are made. But I think that if you eliminate the mistakes, then there are times when it is justified. — Jeff Lindsay

We make needless ado about capital punishment,
taking lives, when there is no life to take. — Henry David Thoreau

Ninety countries still hold on to capital punishment, and, sadly, one of these is the United States, the only Western industrialized country to practice this barbaric punishment. — Antoinette Bosco

It would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to establish any principle upon which the justice or expedience of capital punishment could be founded in a society glorying in its civilization. — Karl Marx

One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts ... to my surprise ... almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

I contend that it's impossible to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out against capital punishment. — Tony Campolo

I support the death penalty because I believe, if administered swiftly and justly, capital punishment is a deterrent against future violence and will save other innocent lives. — George W. Bush

For each man kills the thing he loves yet each man does not die
he does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgrace
nor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his face
nor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty space
He does not sit with silent men who watch him night and day
Who watch him when he tries to weep and when he tries to pray
Who watch him lest himself should rob the prison of its prey — Oscar Wilde

At the end of the day, perhaps the best argument against capital punishment may be that it is an issue beyond the limited capacity of government to get things right. — Scott Turow

That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment. — Scott Turow

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. — Albert Pierrepoint

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order. — George Will

Countries and states which have capital punishment have a much higher rate of murder and crime than countries that do not, so that makes sense to me, and the moral question - I struggle with it morally. — Charlize Theron

There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it is evil. But there are two or three sides to sexual harassment, and the moment you get into particular cases, there is injustice in every conceivable direction. It's a mess. — A.S. Byatt

Capital punishment is the source of many an argument, both good and bad. — Marilyn Vos Savant

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

The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men. — Alfred De Vigny

And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, - at least in theory. — Benjamin Tucker

In effect, nobody who is not from the losing classes has ever been thrust into a death cell in these United States. — Christopher Hitchens

Capital punihsment: That without the Capital get the punishment. — John Spenkelink

I cannot imagine any crime worse than taking a life, can you? -It'd depend whose life. — Brendan Behan

Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job. — George Orwell

You look at the crime and you look at the criminal. If it's a dope dealer who guns down an undercover narcotics officer, then he gets the gas. If it's a drifter who rapes a three-year-old girl, drowns her by holding her little head in a mudhole, then throws her body off a bridge, then you take his life and thank god he's gone. If it's an escaped convict who breaks into a farmhouse late at night and beats and tortures an elderly couple before burning them with their house, then you strap him in a chair, hook up a few wires, pray for his soul, and pull the switch. And if it's two dopeheads who gang-rape a ten-year-old girl and kick her with pointed-toe cowboy boots until her jaws break, then you happily, merrily, thankfully, gleefully lock them in a gas chamber and listen to them squeal. It's very simple. Their crimes were barbaric. Death is too good for them, much too good. — John Grisham

The issue is not whether there are horrible cases where the penalty seems "right". The real question is whether we will ever design a capital system that reaches only the "right" cases, without dragging in the wrong cases, cases of innocence or cases where death is not proportionate punishment. Slowly, even reluctantly, I have realized the answer to that question is no- we will never get it right. — Scott Turow

Jesus is the most famous victim of capital punishment. — James Martin

The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder. — Geoffrey Fisher

In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices. — Teju Cole

The government (or humanity) would not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

There's only one reason to be crucified under the Roman Empire, and that is for treason or sedition. Crucifixion, we have to understand, was not actually a form of capital punishment for Rome. In fact, it was often the case that the criminal would be killed first and then crucified. — Reza Aslan

If the executioner goes, my package will never be made public. If he doesn't go, it will be made public exactly fifty years from the day the bill for a moratorium on capital punishment is defeated. — Caryl Chessman

So it's okay to kill if your intentions are pure?" "Hasn't that always been the case?" Eliot takes a swig of his beer and flops back on the sofa. "Revenge. Capital punishment. Euthanasia. War. — Judd Trichter

I'm disappointed that my own Catholic Church has decided that capital punishment is wrong. Which is pretty hypocritical if you think about it, because they wouldn't even have a religion if it wasn't for capital punishment. — Stephen Colbert

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment. — James Madison

But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment; it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life. — Rebecca West

Like cellulite creams or hair-loss tonics, capital punishment is one of those panaceas that isn't. Only it costs a whole lot more. — Anna Quindlen

But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all - but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now - this very instant - your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man - and that this is certain, certain! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Anyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot — Banksy

Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed? — Woody Allen

A civilized society looks with horror upon the abuse and torture of children or adults. Even where capital punishment is practiced, the aim is to implement it as mercifully as possible. Are we to believe then that a holy God-our heavenly Father-is less just than the courts of men? — Sidney Hatch

I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified. — Benjamin Tucker

I think capital punishment's day is done in this country. I don't think it's fairly applied. — Oliver North

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

The faith I was finding was jagged and more difficult. It wasn't about abstract theological debates: Does God exist? Are sin and salvation predestined? Or even about political/ideological ones: Is capital punishment a sin? Is there a scriptural foundation for accepting homosexuality? It was about action. Taste and see, the Bible said, and I did. — Sara Miles

He was defiantly narrow-minded, barely educated, and at least close to functionally illiterate. His beliefs were powerful but consistently dubious, and made him seem, in the words of The New Yorker, "mildly unbalanced." He did not like bankers, doctors, liquor, tobacco, idleness of any sort, pasteurized milk, Wall Street, overweight people, war, books or reading, J. P. Morgan and Co., capital punishment, tall buildings, college graduates, Roman Catholics, or Jews. Especially he didn't like Jews. Once he hired a Hebraic scholar to translate the Talmud in a manner designed to make Jewish people appear shifty and avaricious. — Bill Bryson

I believe that inside many Americans lies certain uneasiness about capital punishment. — Bill O'Reilly

The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet REvolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927- there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgement has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder. — Katherine Anne Porter

Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest. — Thomas B. Macaulay

As an American I wanted to explore ... why are we the only first world country that still has capital punishment? Is it because we're too afraid to really examine the system, or is it because we really truly believe that this is the best way to deter future crime? — Jodi Picoult

Being a hangman requires you to take someone else's life based on someone else's judgment, and carry it out on someone else's schedule. The job does not provide the same satisfaction that an ordinary murderer gets from smashing a skull. It robs them of the fulfillment of plunging a knife into someone's throat. In the world of capital punishment, the prisoner's crimes have been sanitized by years of sitting on death row. By then, the execution is a cold and impersonal affair. There is prayer, a noose, and a few last words. The prisoner then experiences a sudden rush of blood to the head. At the end of it all, you have a broken neck and a dead body swinging from the end of a rope. That is it. You don't get to manhandle them with your own hands. That's why the brutes you mention will never be hired. So you see, Vaida, this is not a job for a murderer. It is a job for a humanitarian. — Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it. — George Bernard Shaw

Not long ago I was much amused by imagining - what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a dozen people at once, or to do some thing awful, something considered the most awful crime in the world - what a predicament my judges would be in, with my having only a fortnight to live, now that corporal punishment and torture is abolished. I should die comfortably in hospital, warm aad snug, with an attentive doctor, and very likely much more snug and comfortable than at home. I wonder that the idea doesn't strike people in my position, if only as a joke. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death. — Maimonides

Besides the pain in my gut, why shouldn't I laugh? I've almost escaped death in a foreign country. — S.A. Tawks

Plea Against the Death Penalty
Look, examine, reflect. You hold capital punishment up as an example. Why? Because of what it teaches. And just what is it that you wish to teach by means of this example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach that "thou shalt not kill"? By killing.
I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is (sadly) called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed. — Victor Hugo

Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment. — Anjem Choudary

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

For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death. — James Frey

Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life. — Orrin Hatch

If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow. — Steve Allen

We have a legal system, and this is not something that happens all the time. We have capital punishment. America has capital punishment. Iran has capital punishment. Iran hangs people and leaves their bodies hanging on cranes. Iran put to death more than a thousand people last year. I don't see EU reporting on it. — Adel Al-Jubeir

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders. — Albert Camus

The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there? — Roger Ebert

Opponents of capital punishment argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparently, one fact that abolitionists forget or overlook is that the state is acting not only on behalf of society, but also on behalf of the murdered person and the murdered person's family. — Dennis Prager

I guess having one hundred and four condoms full of heroin in your guts and the thought of a firing squad in your head make will make most things seem insignificant. — S.A. Tawks

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

I don't know if the question is whether you believe in capital punishment anymore. I think the greater question is its effectiveness and given the choices we face in California, should we have a merit-based discussion on its effectiveness and costs? — Tani Cantil-Sakauye

Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one whokills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years? — Anton Chekhov

The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors
psychology, sociology, women's studies
to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view. — P. J. O'Rourke

Capital punishment, that thing scares me, it really does. I was talking to my friend about the electric chair, and he starts freakin' out. He's like 'the electric chair? That's too good for these people. That's too good for them'. Alright, how do we make the electric chair worse? How about this? They have to pedal a car battery to their own head. Is that ok? Is that enough, Mr. Hitler? — Dave Attell

The law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime
for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold. — Marquis De Sade

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty. — Henry Ford

If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all. — Anton Chekhov

I am in favour of capital punishment if the execution of the sentence is immediate. The purpose of the death penalty is to send out a message to society. — Ujjwal Nikam

Even if it were within her legal right and authority, it would harm more than help. It might be argued that it is like capital punishment today: the state has the right to use it if necessary, but since it is no longer necessary, it would do more public harm than good in the current war against the culture of death. — Peter Kreeft

What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party. — Ida B. Wells

History of the Jews (Johnson, Paul) - Your Highlight on page 34 | Location 758-759 | Added on Thursday, March 5, 2015 9:59:47 PM in the Mosaic law no property offence is capital. Human life is too sacred where the rights of property alone are violated. It also repudiates vicarious punishment: — Anonymous

As a Catholic, you can have two views on capital punishment. You can think, let Caesar do what Caesar needs to do, and the law says you can impose capital punishment, so you impose it. You can [also] be a Catholic who says we can't kill, we can't kill babies and we can't kill adults. If you let a decision be driven by your personal views, then you are not doing what a judge needs to do, which is enforce the laws of the society that you are in. But you can control your own behavior, and that is the choice that the church and God gives us - what kind of people are we going to be. — Sonia Sotomayor

Everybody believes that capital punishment is wrong, but when they look at certain cases, they're quick to say, 'Put them to death,' or scream 'capital punishment.' — Jeff Lindsay

The main objection to killing people as a punishment ... is that killing people is wrong — Auberon Waugh

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion. — Christopher Hitchens

People are delighted to accept pensions and gratuities, for which they hire out their labour or their support or their services. But nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But if death threatens these same people, you will see them praying to their doctors; if they are in fear of capital punishment, you will see them prepared to spend their all to stay alive. — Seneca.

I've no patience with modern humanitarian scruples about capital punishment. — Agatha Christie

This country is becoming increasingly authoritarian. It's based on capital punishment. — Kate Millett

Executing a murderer is the only way to adequately express our horror at the taking of an innocent life. Nothing else suffices. To equate the lives of killers with those of victims is the worst kind of moral equivalency. If capital punishment is state murder, then imprisonment is state kidnapping and restitution is state theft. — Don Feder

I believe that more people would be alive today if there were a death penalty. — Nancy Reagan

One area of law more than any other besmirches the constitutional vision of human dignity ... The barbaric death penalty violates our Constitution. Even the most vile murderer does not release the state from its obligation to respect dignity, for the state does not honor the victim by< emulating his murderer. Capital punishment's fatal flaw is that it treats people as objects to be toyed with and discarded ... One day the Court will outlaw the death penalty. Permanently. — William J. Brennan