Penalties Quotes - Page 13

Many states and even many people who are in support of the death penalty question their support of the death penalty because of the imperfection of our courts. Through DNA testing, we don't always get it right, even with that.

Rand Paul

Dna, People, Support

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The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment... It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society.

Thurgood Marshall

Fall, Punishment, Ignorant

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I am more optimistic though, that this court will eventually conclude that the effort to eliminate arbitrariness while preserving fairness in the infliction of [death] is so plainly doomed to failure that is - and the death penalty - must be abandoned altogether. I may not live to see that day, but I have faith that eventually it will arrive.

Harry A. Blackmun

Optimistic, Effort, May

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I cannot see any of these death penalty cases where there hasn't been a violation on the ground of either poverty or race. If we can ever get that straightened out, it will help. But, of course, the real answer to it is to do away with the death penalty.

Harry A. Blackmun

Real, Race, Answers

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The death penalty fulfills a preventive function, but it is also very clearly a form of revenge. It is an especially severe form of punishment because it is so final. The human life is ended and the executed person is deprived of the opportunity to change, to restore the harm done or compensate for it.

Dalai Lama

Revenge, Opportunity, Punishment

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

Desmond Tutu

Thinking, Death Penalty, Obscenity

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I was a supporter and believer in the death penalty, but I've begun to see that this system doesn't work and it isn't functional. It costs an obscene amount of money.

Gil Garcetti

Cost, Death Penalty, Law Enforcement

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By reserving the penalty of death for black defendants, or for the poor, or for those convicted of killing white persons, we perpetrate the ugly legacy of slavery-teaching our children that some lives are inherently less precious than others.

Joseph Lowery

Children, Teaching, White

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It is one thing to impose drastic measures and harsh economic penalties when an environmental problem is clear-cut and severe....It is foolish to do so when the problem is largely hypothetical and not substantiated by observations....we do not currently have any convincing evidence or observations of significant climate change from other than natural causes.

Frederick Seitz

Cutting, Convincing Evidence, Environmental

"2008 Climate Debate" by William F. Jasper, www.thenewamerican.com. March 31, 2008.

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It is one thing to impose drastic measures and harsh economic penalties when an environmental problem is clear-cut and severe...

Frederick Seitz

Cutting, Environmental, Problem

"2008 Climate Debate" by William F. Jasper, www.thenewamerican.com. March 31, 2008.

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Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.

Albert Camus

Death, Punishment, Dying

"Reflections on the Guillotine". Book by Albert Camus, 1957.

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Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.

Alexander Hamilton

Government, Law, Punishment

The Federalist no. 15 (1788)

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We oppose the death penalty not just for what it does to those guilty of heinous crimes, but for what it does to all of us: It offers the tragic illusiion that we can defend life by taking life.

Joseph Fiorenza

Doe, Death Penalty, Guilty

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To exclude all jurors who would be in the slightest way effected by the prospect of the death penalty would be to deprive the defendant of the impartial jury to which he or she is entitled under the law.

Byron White

Law, Way, Would Be

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

Evelyn Lundberg Stratton

Thinking, Death Penalty

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The death penalty is a poor person's issue. Always remember that: after all the rhetoric that goes on in the legislative assemblies, in the end, when the deck is cast out, it is the poor who are selected to die in this country.

Helen Prejean

Country, Issues, Goes On

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When people of color are killed in the inner city, when homeless people are killed, when the "nobodies" are killed, district attorneys do not seek to avenge their deaths. Black, Hispanic, or poor families who have a loved one murdered not only don't expect the district attorney's office to pursue the death penalty -which, of course, is both costly and time consuming- but are surprised when the case is prosecuted at all.

Helen Prejean

Color, Cities, Office

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Those of us who spent time in the agricultural sector and in the heartland, we understand how unfair the death penalty is.

George W. Bush

Heart, Humor, Political

Remarks by the President at Nebraska Welcome, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. February 28, 2001.

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I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society. I reject the notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true - that savagery begets only savagery.

Andrei Sakharov

Foundation, Essentials, Savages

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Most successful pundits are selected for being opinionated, because it's interesting, and the penalties for incorrect predictions are negligible. You can make predictions, and a year later people won't remember them.

Daniel Kahneman

Successful, Years, People

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I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty.

Chief Joseph

Native American, Law, American Indian

Lincoln Hall Speech in Washington D.C., January 14, 1879.

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I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity.

Desmond Tutu

Country, Usa, Rights

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With respect to the death penalty, I believe that a majority of the Supreme Court will one day accept that when the state punishes with death, it denies the humanity and dignity of the victim and transgresses the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That day will be a great day for our country, for it will be a great day for our Constitution.

William J. Brennan

Country, Believe, Punishment

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Our history shows that the death penalty has been unjustly imposed, innocents have been killed by the state, effective rehabilitation has been impaired, judicial administration has suffered. It is the poor, the sick, the ignorant, the powerless, and the hated who are executed.

Ramsey Clark

Sick, Ignorant, Rehabilitation

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I tell myself that I had simply better accept the fact that the death penalty is here to stay in our society, at least for a while, and there is nothing I can do about it. Maybe, in time- after how many executions? - people will come to realize the futility of randomly selecting a few people to die each year.

Helen Prejean

Years, People, Our Society

Helen Prejean (2011). “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States”, p.106, Vintage

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