Death Penalty Quotes - Page 9

• It doesn't make any difference if you are in favor of capital punishment or if you are opposed to capital punishment. The fact of the matter is that as a viable penalty, capital punishment does not work at this time and has not worked in the State of Florida for many, many years.

  Gerald Kogan

  Florida, Years, Punishment

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• Capital punihsment: That without the Capital get the punishment.

  John Spenkelink

  Punishment

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• Humankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter - hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Hatred, Violence, Overcoming

  Mahatma Gandhi (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.46, New Directions Publishing

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• Our emotions may cry for vengeance in the wake of a horrible crime, but we know that killing the criminal will not undo the crime, will not prevent similar crimes by others, does not benefit the victim, destroys human life and brutalizes society. If we are to still violence, we must cherish life. Executions cheapen life.

  Ramsey Clark

  Violence, Execution, Criminals

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• Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.

  Eliot Spitzer

  Winning, Best Effort, Justice

  "All Police Interrogations Should Be Tape-Recorded" by Eliot Spitzer, www.slate.com. October 08, 2012.

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• We need some clergy with some backbone, who don't mind making uncomfortable at times those who are very comfortable, and challenging them at the core of their faith, at least causing them to pause and to have dialogue and to be open for further discussion.

  Tim McDonald

  Challenges, Mind, Needs

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• To condemn someone to death is to surrender; it proves that you failed. You are not able to change him, to change her; you have to kill him or her. You surrender. ... You only demonstrate your lack of capacity, your helplessness. This is failure.

  Nhat Hanh

  Able, Surrender, Capacity

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• Do I need to argue to Your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love, and understanding?

  Clarence Darrow

  Heart, Evil, Hatred

  Clarence Darrow (2012). “Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom”, p.52, University of Chicago Press

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• I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man.

  Primo Levi

  Men, Inhumanity To Man, Mankind

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• In all religions, we make a choice about what we emphasize, and I choose to come down on the side of a loving God.

  Bernice King

  Choices, Sides, Loving God

  Bernice King (1999). “Hard Questions, Heart Answers”, p.45, Harmony

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• The calculated killing of a human being by the state involves, by its very nature, an absolute denial of the executed person's humanity. The most vile murder does not, in my view, release the state from constitutional restraint on the destruction of human dignity.

  William J. Brennan

  Views, Humanity, Doe

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• I am pleased that I am able to stand here today and say with a pure heart and meaningful heart that I am against the death penalty. There is no purpose that it serves except to further the damage that death has already done.

  Mamie Till

  Meaningful, Heart, Purpose

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• We as the Church need to express wherever appropriate and wherever possible our stance against the death penalty. We need to talk about it. A lot of people don't feel comfortable in doing this but I think we need to, as the Pope says, preach the whole gospel of life.

  Gabino Zavala

  Thinking, People, Church

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• It's ironic that the Bible belt is the killing belt - Texas, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, and so forth, Georgia. Chief executioners.

  Joseph Lowery

  Virginia, Florida, Texas

  "Religious Reflections on the Death Penalty". The Pew Forum, www.pewforum.org. June 5, 2001.

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• I think the clearest manifestation for anyone who doubts that racism and classism exist in America, all one need do is take a real serious objective look at our criminal justice system.

  Tim McDonald

  Real, Thinking, America

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• When the state executes a member of the human family, it declares that person worthless, without possibility of redemption. As Christians, we believe this is a heresy, a denial that each human being is created in God's own image.

  Doug Davidson

  Christian, Believe, Denial

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• They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable. Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species - we, in short - had the potential to construct an enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act.

  Primo Levi

  Pain, Men, Effort

  Primo Levi (2017). “The Drowned and the Saved”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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• We need to acknowledge that the death penalty is broken beyond repair.

  George Gascon

  Broken, Needs, Law Enforcement

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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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• If the Pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millenia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture.

  Avery Dulles

  Teaching, Exercise, Two

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• Frankly, I don't think you should perform in a plaza where thousands of Cubans have been subjected to the death penalty, by firing squad, including three young black men in 2003. What is needed in Cuba is a concert in favor of democracy, civil liberties for the people, the freedom of political prisoners, free elections and the expulsion of dictatorial power.

  Zoe Valdes

  Men, Thinking, Squad

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• Crucial to understanding federalism in modern day America is the concept of mobility, or 'the ability to vote with your feet.' If you don't support the death penalty and citizens packing a pistol - don't come to Texas. If you don't like medicinal marijuana and gay marriage, don't move to California.

  Rick Perry

  Moving, Gay, Marijuana

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• 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

  Years, Punishment, Justice

  Thurgood Marshall (2001). “Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions, and Reminiscences”, Chicago Review Press

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• 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

  Revenge, Believe, Views

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• 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

  Mistake, Eye, Direct Action

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