quotations about capital punishment
The death sentence, capital punishment
Give to blood-shed, convict the innocent
Eradicate the witness
P.O.D.
"Murdered Love"
This country started going to hell when they stopped hanging folks. No gallows dirt. No gallows deals.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
Some of the earliest systematic research on the possible deterrent effects of capital punishment was conducted by Thorsten Sellin. Sellin's method consisted of comparing the rates of willful homicide in contiguous death penalty and non-death penalty states. His underlying assumption was that geographically proximate states would also be more or less alike on various social, economic, and historical factors that might also effect crime. Sellin was able to conclude that homicide rates in states with capital punishment were generally not lower than those of neighboring states without the sanction.
HERBERT H. HAINES
Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in America, 1972-1994
And if you escape, you better swim fast
'Cause I'll catch ya, physically and mentally
And the capital punishment's the penalty
Sitting in the electric chair, grab a hold
Pull the switch, yo' body twitch, your eye's explode
out your skull 'cause being dull on a flow
Is an N-O
ICE CUBE
"The Grand Finale"
If we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well.
HELEN PREJEAN
Dead Man Walking
Capital punishment: them without the capital get the punishment.
JOHN SPENKELINK
last words before his execution in Starke Prison, Florida, May 25, 1979
There are some human rights that are so deep that we can't negotiate them away. I mean people do heinous, terrible things. But there are basic human rights I believe that every human being has. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations says it for me. And it says there are two basic rights that can't be negotiated that government doesn't give for good behavior and doesn't take away for bad behavior. And it's the right not to be tortured and not to be killed. Because the flip side of this is that then when you say OK we're gonna turn over -- they truly have done heinous things, so now we will turn over to the government now the right to take their life. It involves other people in doing essentially the same kind of act.
HELEN PREJEAN
"Angel on Death Row", PBS Frontline, April 9, 1996
The death penalty, in democratic societies, will continue to be inflicted until the majority becomes civilized enough to appreciate its essential horror and depravity.
STEVE ALLEN
Reflections
The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment -- in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes -- outweighs the risk of error.
ANTONIN SCALIA
Kansas v. Marsh, 2006
A top dogg said the game is to be sold not told
Pulled out the ill-matic 16 shots to your dome
Capital punishment back trash trapped in crime
The ghetto's trying to kill me, license to ill criminal mind
FREDRO STARR
"Thug Warz", Firestarr
Waiting in your cold hell
Waiting for a sign
Waiting in your cold hell
Waiting for the chime
Capital punishment for you
Capital punishment for you have sinned
WUMPSCUT
"Capital Punishment"
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
Executioner: Pierrepoint
When I was running for governor, I was attacked pretty strongly because of my position on the death penalty. But I looked the voters of Virginia in the eye and said, look, this is my religion. I'm not going to change my religious practice to get one vote, but I know how to take an oath and uphold the law. And if you elect me, I will uphold the law. And I was elected, and I did. It was very, very difficult to allow executions to go forward, but in circumstances where I didn't feel like there was a case for clemency, I told Virginia voters I would uphold the law, and I did.
TIM KAINE
Vice Presidential Candidates Debate, October 4, 2016
I think people are alive today because of the death penalty.
NANCY REAGAN
attributed, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?
ROGER EBERT
"Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.", Chicago Sun-Times, February 4, 2000
Dead Man Walking Shaved Head Last Prayer No Remorse
4... 3... 2... 1... Throw the Switch!
STUCK MOJO
"Throw the Switch"
The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.
EMMA GOLDMAN
Anarchism
If we could do away with death, we wouldn't object; to do away with capital punishment will be more difficult. Were that to happen, we would reinstate it from time to time.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Wilhelm Meister's Travels
The death penalty in the United States has increasingly come to symbolize a disturbing tolerance for error and injustice that has undermined the integrity of criminal justice administration and America's commitment to human rights.
BRYAN STEVENSON
"Close to Death: Reflections on Race and Capital Punishment in America", Debating the Death Penalty
As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a criminal so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography