Quotes About Death penalty

When you have a death row case, you have to make 100 percent sure you have the right person. But these DAs in the state of Alabama are racist.

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

No country can become an E.U. member state if it introduces the death penalty.

The death penalty system is fundamentally flawed - it is inequitable, ineffective, and it has no place in this Commonwealth or this country.

I would say, people use labels all the time, but I'm kind of a traditional Catholic: Personally, I'm opposed to abortion, and personally, I'm opposed to the death penalty.

The death penalty question should be put on the agenda in Hungary.

Any effort to make the death penalty speedier and less costly - more 'efficient' - will inevitably make it less just.

When I got lucky enough to be successful as an actor, and I got involved in the anti-war stuff and gay rights movement, there was always this thing eating at me about the death penalty, because that was, to me, the bottom line. That was the anti-life - by definition - position, and I didn't understand why we did it.

The death penalty confronts us with a penetrating moral question: Can even the monstrous crimes of those who are condemned to death and are truly guilty of such crimes erase their sacred dignity as human beings and their intrinsic right to life?

Because values change, legislatures abolish the death penalty, permit same-sex marriage if they want, abolish laws against homosexual conduct. That's how the change in a society occurs. Society doesn't change through a Constitution.

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not... with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

In fact the entire political leadership should face the death penalty under U.S. law for these actions. They're all eligible for the death penalty, according to the War Crimes Act passed by the 1996 Republican congress.

You went there?" "Yes—Dallas. Uncle Harry and Aunt Tess lived there for a while. There's nothing to do but go to the movies and you can't walk anywhere, people have to drive you. Also they have rattlesnakes, and the death penalty, which I think is primitive and unethical in ninety-eight per cent of cases. But it'll probably be better for her there." "Why?

If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That's flexibility.

There is no doubt that the most heinous crimes warrant the death penalty.

So the chances of you being sentenced to Death Row in America is roughly the same as you winning the lottery.

Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it? The following offences merit the death penalty, according to Leviticus 20: cursing your parents; committing adultery; making love to your stepmother or your daughter-in-law; homosexuality; marrying a woman and her daughter; bestiality (and, to add injury to insult, the unfortunate beast is to be killed too).

How many literalists have read enough of the Bible to know that the death penalty is prescribed for adultery, for gathering sticks on the sabbath and for cheeking your parents? If we reject Deuteronomy and Leviticus (as all enlightened moderns do), by what criteria do we then decide which of religion's moral values to accept?

It takes balls to execute an innocent man.

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.

I can't talk politics with my cousin because he's such a hypocrite. He's against the death penalty and he hanged himself.

I expect you (William Whitelaw) were as impressed as I was to read of the recent electrocution in Florida of a character called John Spenkelink in the electric chair. It seems that a full six minutes passed before Spenkelink was dead, during which time he hopped about like a prawn on a hot plate.

I have long believed that the death penalty is in all circumstances a barbaric and inhuman punishment that violates our Constitution. Even the most vile murderer does not release the state from its constitutional obligation to respect human dignity, for the state does not honor the victim by emulating the murderer who took his life. The fatal infirmity of capital punishment is that it treats members of the human race as non-humans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded.

My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.