Quotes About Death penalty

There's a War Crimes Act in the United States passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, which says that grave breaches of the Geneva Convention are subject to the death penalty. And that doesn't mean the soldier that committed them - that means the commanders.

I was personally opposed to the death penalty, and yet I think I have probably asked for the death penalty more than most people in the United States.

For one, as I've written before, the death penalty is plainly unjust. When the number of wrongful convictions and death penalty cases that are eventually exonerated number in the hundreds, if not thousands, we can not call it a moral system.

You know, the Bible is so clear. Go to Genesis chapter nine and you will find the death penalty clearly stated in Genesis chapter nine... God ordains the death penalty!

States without the death penalty have had consistently lower murder rates. And national murder rates have declined steadily since 1992, despite fewer executions.

The death penalty and the arguments it inspires don't only involve ethics, morals, and justice. There are bureaucratic and economic aspects to it as well. All these different aspects commingle in ways that convince me we should take whatever steps we can to abolish the death penalty.

Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the penalty of death but the history of Ireland explains that crime and justifies it.

He was ready to argue there was no rational way you could justify the death penalty, except to admit it was absolute revenge. If that, he would say, was the foundation of the criminal justice system, then we had a pretty sick system.

He committed the crime of stupidity while under my command, said Citizen. Oh my, said Rigg. They're handing out the death penalty for that these days?

For more than 20 years, I have endeavored -- indeed, I have struggled -- along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor. Rather than continue to coddle the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.

According to the L.A. Times, Attorney General John Ashcroft wants to take "a harder stance" on the death penalty. What's a harder stance on the death penalty? We're already killing the guy? How do you take a harder stance on the death penalty? What, are you going to tickle him first? Give him itching powder? Put a thumbtack on the electric chair?

It's absolutely clear that whatever cruel and unusual punishments may - may mean with regard to future things, such as death by injection or the electric chair, it's clear that - that the death penalty, in and of itself, is not considered cruel and unusual punishment.

I have a moral position against the death penalty. But I took an oath of office to uphold it. Following an oath of office is also a moral obligation.

People tend to see all black congressmen as liberals with an urban twist: They're all for gun control and against the death penalty. It's not true, and it shouldn't be true.

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.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

I had also learned that the death penalty in the United States has always been most rigorously applied in Southern states - mostly toward those who kill whites.

New York City, in a state with no death penalty, reduced its crime rate dramatically in the first four months of 1992 — murders declined by 11 percent — which many attribute to increased community policing.

That's why you're never going to find a rich person on death row.

if I were to be murdered I would not want my murderer executed. I would not want my death avenged. Especially by government — which 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.

In the last twenty years at least forty-six people have been released from death row because the errors in their convictions were found in time to save their lives. Some are not so lucky.

The majority of Utah's citizens do not merely approve the death penalty, they demand it - the state religion demands it.

While I oppose the death penalty as a policy matter, in a legal culture in which we reserve the right to execute people for relatively routine street crimes, it seems quite absurd for the justice system to get squeamish about executing the operational masterminds of Sept. 11.

I'm against the death penalty. I believe that it is a mistake to show that killing people is wrong by killing people. However I'm not against the random killing of people who snore.