Death Penalty Quotes - Page 6

• Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one ... So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.

  Auberon Waugh

  Long, Evil, Trying

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• They also have at that critical point of death the opportunity to be converted to God through repentance. And if they are so obstinate that even at the point of death their heart does not draw back from malice, it is possible to make a quite probable judgment that they would never come away from evil.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Heart, Opportunity, Evil

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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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• 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.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Law, Tickets, Driving

  Lawrence Lessig (2004). “Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity”, p.192, Penguin

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• The sentence of the first murderer was pronounced by the Supreme Judge of the universe. Was it death? No, it was life. 'A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth'; and 'Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Taken, Judging, Vagabonds

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1887). “Final Memorials of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”

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• I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people...The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off.

  Albert Pierrepoint

  Revenge, Responsibility, Hands

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Society may protect itself without putting a human to death as it would a wild animal. Since we believe each person has a soul, and is capable of achieving salvation, life in prison is now an alternative to the death penalty.

  Richard Viguerie

  Believe, Animal, Soul

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

  Anthony Kennedy

  Weight, Opinion, Penalties

  United States Supreme Court, Roper, Superintendent, Potosi Correctional Center v. Simmons, (2005), No. 03-633, IV, caselaw.findlaw.com. March 1, 2005.

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• The same divine authority that forbids the killing of a human being establishes certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time.

  Saint Augustine

  Law, Giving, Limited Time

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• As governor, I came to believe that the death penalty would be a just punishment for certain, especially heinous crimes, such as the murder of a child or the murder of a police officer. The events of September 11 convinced me that terrorists also deserve the ultimate punishment.

  Howard Dean

  Children, Believe, Punishment

  "The Flip-Flops of Howard Dean: What he said then. What he says now. What happened" by William Saletan and Avi Zenilman, www.slate.com. September 11, 2003.

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• I happen to be catholic, and I heard that the pope was asking that we abolish the death penalty and I would have to respectfully disagree with him. As many murders as I've had to deal with in my career, watching and dealing with the victim's families throughout the beginning of the incident all the way until today. There are a lot of folks that feel that they didn't have the justice that was due to them.

  John Cabello

  Justice, Catholic, Today

  Source: www.teenink.com

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• If society gives up the right to impose the death penalty, then self-help will appear again and personal vendettas will be around the corner.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Giving Up, Self, Helping

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• I have inquired for most of my adult life, about studies that might show that the death penalty is a deterrent, and I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point.

  Janet Reno

  Adults, Research, Might

  Janet Reno during weekly Press Conference, www.justice.gov. January 20, 2000.

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• In Texas, we have the death penalty, and we use it. That's right. If you come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back.

  Ron White

  Texas, Use, Penalties

  Ron White (2007). “I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability”, p.170, Penguin

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

  Antonin Scalia

  Pain, Causes, Execution

  "Lethal Injection Revisited" by Christopher Brauchli, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

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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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• If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated.

  Jimmy Carter

  Country, Doubt, Guilt

  "America divided on death penalty, Troy Davis". www.cnn.com. September 22, 2011.

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• We as Americans believe it’s OK to kill people. We believe it’s OK to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. We think it’s OK to invade a country where we think Osama Bin Laden is and he’s in the other country. So we just go in and we just kill. And we have the death penalty, we sanction it.

  Michael Moore

  Country, Believe, Thinking

  "Michael Moore: Gun Control Necessary, Now" by Nicole Evatt, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 9, 2013.

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• There is a very broad theory that society gets the right to hang, as the individual gets the right to defend himself. Suppose she does; there are certain principles which limit this right. Society has got the murderer within four walls; he never can do any more harm. Has society any need to take that man's life to protect itself? If any society has only the right that the individual has, she has no right to inflict the penalty of death, because she can effectually restrain the individual from ever again committing his offence.

  Wendell Phillips

  Wall, Men, Principles

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• There is a strong religious commitment to the sanctity of human life, but, paradoxically, some of the most fervent protectors of microscopic stem cells are the most ardent proponents of the death penalty.

  Jimmy Carter

  Religious, Strong, Commitment

  Jimmy Carter (2005). “Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis”, p.78, Simon and Schuster

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• I don't think I would want the responsibility for enforcing the death penalties. There's always the inevitable question of whether someone you gave the order to execute might truly have been innocent.

  Jesse Ventura

  Responsibility, Thinking, Order

  Jesse Ventura (2000). “I Ain't Got Time to Bleed: Reworking the Body Politic from the Bottom Up”, p.34, Villard

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• I come from the state of Michigan. We were the first English-speaking government in the world to outlaw the death penalty, back in the 1840s. We have never had, as a state, the death penalty in Michigan. I was raised with that, and even Republicans in Michigan, nobody would even think of putting a measure on the ballot to have the death penalty.

  Michael Moore

  Thinking, Government, Firsts

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• There's a second life involved. No matter what your position is on abortion or the death penalty, you shouldn't put a pregnant woman to death.

  George H. W. Bush

  Abortion, Matter, Penalties

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• I believe that the death penalty is the ultimate deterrent to violent crime...period.

  Troy King

  Believe, Crime, Violent

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• It's a phony issue. To pretend the death penalty is going to end crime in the United States is to fool people, to promote public ignorance.

  Rudy Giuliani

  Ignorance, Issues, People

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