Penalty Quotes

The death penalty is becoming a way of life in this country.

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society.

Jesus has borne the death penalty on our behalf. Behold the wonder! There He hang upon the cross!

Now let me get this straight. Bush is anti-abortion, but pro-death penalty. I guess it's all in the timing, huh?

Sometimes you just have the thin the herd.

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

The death penalty experiment has failed.

McVeigh's lawyer got him the death penalty, which, quite frankly, I could have done.

It's very rare that someone gets the death penalty for charges of conspiracy, for his influence, for his Svengali-Rasputin act.

Are you the sum total of your worst acts?

I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.

Our law is a Jordanian law that we inherited, which applies to both the West Bank and Gaza, and sets the death penalty for those who sell land to Israelis.

The death penalty is being applied in the United States as a fatal lottery.

My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty.

The campaign against the death penalty has been - while a powerful campaign, its participants have been those who attend all of the vigils, a relatively small number of people.

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

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

I'm pro-death penalty, but what I have not seen is anybody that would mock someone on death row.

Given the irreversibility of the death penalty, the possibility of a wrongful conviction can never be overstated.

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

This case has had full analyzation and has been looked at a lot. I understand the emotionality of death penalty cases.

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.

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.

From the moment you are in that cell, when they tell you you're going ot be electrocuted, you contemplate it all the time. It never leaves your mind, and they never let it leave your mind.

When you're talking about death, you can't afford to make even one mistake.

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.

As a member of the New York Senate from 1966 to 1989, I voted 12 times to establish the death penalty in New York... I regret my votes in favor of the death penalty.

The system is not perfect. Until it's perfect, let's do away with the death penalty.

It is an expensive government program with the power to kill people.

Most conservatives also believe in the death penalty, but not abortion, which proves they like to procrastinate.

The death sentence is a barbaric act.

First of all, it does not deter crime, the death penalty.

I agree with Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that he would support the death penalty only when the infallibility of human judgment had been demonstrated.

The death penalty is reserved for people who do not

I think [the death penalty is] very expensive, and the delays are inordinate, delaying closure for the victims' families.

Remember the death penalty is murder.

At some point in this death-penalty debate, the sanctity of innocent life demands that men and women of conservative conscience have to say: Enough.

If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed.

Eliminating the death penalty...will not hinder the prosecutorial capacity to seek, or the court's ability to impose, 'life without parole' sentences for serious, heinous crimes and criminals.

I am in favour of capital punishment if the execution of the sentence is immediate. The purpose of the death penalty is to send out a message to society.

The death penalty is inhumane... whether that person is in a [jail] or it's bin Laden.

Capital punihsment: That without the Capital get the punishment.

I am not anti-death penalty, but I'm damned sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed.

Evidence of innocence is irrelevant!

The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.

The death penalty doesn't need your assent to continue ... it needs your indifference.

Prosecutors must reveal the dirty little secret they too often share only among themselves: The death penalty actually hinders the fight against crime.

We have abolished the death penalty for humans, so why should it continue for animals?

The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often.

Our ancestors... purged their guilt by banishment, not death. And by so doing, they stopped that endless vicious cycle of murder and revenge.