"But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
~ Albert Camus, 'Reflections on the Guillotine'
"An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
-- Albert Camus
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
M K Gandhi
"I have yet to see a death case among the dozen coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial... People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty."
-Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"It can be argued that rapists deserve to be raped, that mutilators deserve to be mutilated. Most societies, however, refrain from responding in this way because the punishment is not only degrading to those on whom it is imposed, but it is also degrading to the society that engages in the same behavior as the criminals."
-Stephen Bright, human rights attorney
"Society may protect itself without putting a human to death as it would a wild animal. Since we believe each person has a soul, and is capable of achieving salvation, life in prison is now an alternative to the death penalty."
-Richard Viguerie and Brent Bozell, Tea Party supporters
"I've been haunted by the men I was asked to execute in the name of the state of Florida. This is premeditated, carefully thought out ceremonial killing."
-Ron McAndrew, was a prison warden in Florida
"[I am] haunted by the demon of error - error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die."
-George Ryan, former Illinois Governor
"To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice."
-Desmond Tutu
"Imposition of the death penalty is arbitrary and capricious. Decision of who will live and who will die for his crime turns less on the nature of the offense and the incorrigibility of the offender and more on inappropriate and indefensible considerations: the political and personal inclinations of prosecutors; the defendant's wealth, race and intellect; the race and economic status of the victim; the quality of the defendant's counsel; and the resources allocated to defense lawyers."
-Gerald Heaney, former appellate judge
"I have never heard a murderer say they thought about the death penalty as consequence of their actions prior to committing their crimes."
-Gregory Ruff, police lieutenant in Kansas
"As if one crime of such nature, done by a single man, acting individually, can be expiated by a similar crime done by all men, acting collectively."
-Lewis Lawes, warden of Sing Sing prison in NY in the 1920s and 30s
“People say that executing criminals does not take away from their dignity – if it is done with dignity. But the fact of the matter is that whether you’re waiting to die by lethal injection – waiting ... for the poison to flow down your veins – or waiting for a bullet, or waiting for a rope, or waiting for gas, or waiting for the electric current – there is no difference: there is no lesser or greater dignity in dying. The practice of the death penalty is the practice of torture. And by the time people I have been with finally climb into the chair to be killed, they have died a thousand times already because of their anticipation of the final horror.”
– Helen Prejean, author of the book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.”
“Can the state, which represents the whole of society and has the duty of protecting society, fulfill that duty by lowering itself to the level of the murderer, and treating him as he treated others? The forfeiture of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process. And I believe that future generations, throughout the world, will come to agree.”
– Kofi Annan, Ghanaian diplomat and Secretary General of the United Nations 1997-2007
“It should be clear that the death penalty does just the opposite of promoting decency and respect for life. It dehumanizes people and promotes murder. It can never be applied fairly.”
– John Morrison
“With every cell of my being, and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms.... I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an Angel of Death.”
– Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1986.
“Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one … So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.”
– Auberon Waugh, British author and journalist.
“Government ... 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.”
– Helen Prejean, author of the book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.”
“It is well-nigh obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinities with murderers than those who oppose it.”
-- Remy de Gourmont
“In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
“through god's eyes murder is still murder. there's no such thing as a legal murder, it's only legal through the eyes of a murderer.”
David J. Martinez
“The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.”
Anton Chekhov
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“I believe [...] that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.”
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
“But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”
Victor Hugo, The Last Day of a Condemned Man
Pope John Paul II
“A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I …appeal…for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”
“I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime, rape and murder included. Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.”
No man has the right to take God's place and say another man should die. It destroyed my life."
Perry Cobb, who spent eight years on Illinois' death row for a crime he did not commit. He was exonerated in 1987.
"My overriding belief is that it is always possible for criminals to improve and that by its very finality the death penalty contradicts this."
The Dalai Lama
I know something about killing. I don't like killing. And I don't think a state honors life by turning around and sanctioning killing. Now, that's just a personal belief that I have.
JOHN KERRY, Wolf Blitzer Reports, CNN, Sep. 17, 1996
Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but it serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment; therefore the principle inherent in the clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment.
WILLIAM J. BRENNAN, judicial opinion, Jul. 2, 1976
"I disagree very much with Justice Scalia’s certitude that we have never put to death an innocent person. It’s one of the reasons why I personally am opposed to the death penalty. We have the greatest judicial system in the world, but at the end of the day it’s made up of men and women making decisions, tough decisions. Men and women who are dedicated, but dedicated men and women can make mistakes. And I find it hard to believe that in our history that has not happened."
- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in an interview for The Marshall Project, Nov. 17, 2014.
“[T]here has never been any evidence that the death penalty reduces capital crimes or that crimes increased when executions stopped. Tragic mistakes are prevalent...It is clear that there are overwhelming ethical, financial, and religious reasons to abolish the death penalty."
- Former President Jimmy Carter
"Give a law enforcement professional like me that $250 million, and I'll show you how to reduce crime. The death penalty isn't anywhere on my list.”
- Police Chief James Abbott, West Orange, New Jersey
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
"Cases such as these provide for me an excruciating agony of the spirit. I yield to no one in the depth of my distaste, antipathy, and indeed, abhorrence, for the death penalty, with all its aspects of physical distress and fear and of moral judgment exercised by finite minds. That distaste is buttressed by a belief that capital punishment serves no useful purpose that can be demonstrated ... Were I a legislator, I would vote against the death penalty."
-Justice Harry Blackmun's opinion in Furman vs. Georgia, 1972
"We are not so mad as to think that we shall create a world in which murder will not occur. We are fighting for a world in which murder will no longer be legal."
-Albert Camus
"We oppose the death penalty not just for what it does to those guilty of heinous crimes, but for what it does to all of us: It offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life."
-Rev. Joseph A. Fiorenza, President of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, U.S. Catholic Conference, 1999
"The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment...
It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society."
—United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
"As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivically opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder."
-Corretta Scott King
"We regard all forms of capital punishment as barbaric and obsolete"
-Rabannical Assembly
"The Death Penalty is nothing less than human sacrifice. It has ritual, religion, and it is to appease the God of vengeance. This society accuses the Aztecs of human sacrifice when they practice human sacrifice in virtually every state in the union."
-Russell Means, First National Director of the American Indian Movement, Activist
"You can take away our names and replace them with numbers, cage and store us in conditions not even fit for your family dog, and exterminate us at your whim, but we are still human beings, capable of everything from love and beauty to violence and hate."
-- Thomas B. Whitaker, Texas Death Row Inmate #999522.
"Evidence of innocence is irrelevant!"
-- Mary Sue Terry, former Attorney General of Virginia, replying to an appeal to introduce new evidence from a prisoner sentenced to death.
"To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today."
-- Albert Camus, French writer and philosopher
"The gallows is not only a machine of death but a symbol. It is the symbol of terror, cruelty, and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism. It stands for everything that mankind must reject, if mankind is to survive the present crisis."
-- Arthur Koestler, English novelist and essayist.
"And so to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honour, and peace, until the Gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand."
-- George Bernard Shaw, English playwright
"I don't think there's any words in the English language to explain what it's --what it's like to-- to sit on Texas death row and your thoughts are laying on that gurney, convicted but innocent and being put to death."
-- Kerry Max Cook, twice convicted and sentenced to death for the 1977 rape murder of a 21-year-old secretary in Tyler, TX. Cook was released after 22 years
"The conditions of confinement are so oppressive, the helplessness endured in the roller coaster of hope and despair so wrenching and exhausting, that ultimately the inmate can no longer bear it, and then it is only in dropping his appeals that he has any sense of control over his fate."
-- Dr. Stuart Grassian, psychiatrist and expert in death row inmates; about prisoners who "volunteer" for execution
"I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society. I reject the notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true - that savagery begets only savagery."
-- Andrei Sakharov, Russian nuclear physicist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate
"I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity." --
Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
"But the chief and worst pain may not be in the bodily suffering but in one's not knowing for certain that in an hour, and then now, at the very moment, the soul will leave the body and that one will cease to be a man and that that's bound to happen; the worst part of it is that it's certain ... To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. Anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in a wood or something of that sort, must surely hope to escape till the very last minute ..., but in the other case (execution) all that last hope which makes dying ten times as easy is taken away for certain. There is the sentence, and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world more terrible."
-- Feodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist
"There is a part of the warden that dies with his prisoner. Nobody else can suffer the intimacy of impending death, or experience the pitiable helplessness involved, in the same way as the warden and his condemned prisoner. Both are victims, unwilling captives of a human tragedy that is presented on a stage shrouded by mystery. It is played before a small, invited audience that is hidden from public view. Acted out in the darkness of night, as if to shield the citizenry from the awful reality of it all, an execution is a drama that panders to public fear and to a lust for vengeance, which is otherwise disguised as justice."
-- Donald A. Cabana, former warden of Mississippi's State Penitentiary (Parchman) who supervised two executions in the prison gas chamber before quitting his job and publicly opposing 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, Britain's last official hangman, in his 1974 autobiography
To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE, Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
"When you execute a man who has been on death row seven, eight, 10 or 12 years, you are not executing the same man that came in."
Don Cabana, former warden of Mississippi's Parchman Penitentiary
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