Capital Punishment

John Morrison

2010-11-27T11:38:00.003-08:00

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

Helen Prejean

2010-11-27T11:38:00.001-08:00

The profound moral question is not, "Do they deserve to die?" but "Do we deserve to kill them?" - Helen Prejean

Eberhard Arnold

2010-11-27T11:37:00.004-08:00

We ourselves must no presume to shorten the life of any human being. That would be no less than a crime against God. If we believe that death is the last enemy, then we shall not offer him our hand to serve him by killing men. - Eberhard Arnold

Coretta Scott King

2010-11-27T11:37:00.002-08:00

Forgiving violence does not mean condoning violence. There are only two alternatives to forgiving violence: revenge, or adopting an attitude of never-ending bitterness and anger. For too long we have treated violence with violence, and that's why it never ends. - Coretta Scott King

Helen Prejean

2010-11-27T11:37:00.000-08:00

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 to 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

Helen Prejean

2010-11-27T11:36:00.005-08:00

Money and influence decide who is considered for a parole hearing, what the decision is likely to be and what the Governor's decision is likely to be. It is that, not your behavior in prison that decides your release. - Helen Prejean

Helen Prejean

2010-11-27T11:36:00.003-08:00

In the example given (patently patriarchal: the woman is considered the negotiable property of her male master), it is clear that punishment is to be measured out according to the seriousness of the offense. If the child is lost but not the mother, the punishment is less grave than if both mother and child are lost. Only and eye for an eye, only a life for a life is the intent of this passage. Restraint was badly needed. It was not uncommon for an offended family or clan to slaughter entire communities in retaliation for an offense against one of their members. - Helen Prejean

Helen Prejean

2010-11-27T11:36:00.001-08:00

I tell myself that I had simply better accept the fact that the death penalty is here to stay in our society, at least for a while, and there is nothing I can do about it. Maybe, in time- after how many executions? - people will come to realize the futility of randomly selecting a few people to die each year. - Helen Prejean

Larry Mattera

2010-11-27T11:35:00.001-08:00

If violence is objectivated institutionally as an expression of a society's collective political will to justice, institutions of violence will necessarily become formative of society. The more profoundly a society comes to rely on institutionalized violence as an instrument of its political purpose, the more tightly will institutionalized violence entangle society and the more formative of societal identity violence will become. - Larry Mattera

Helen Prejean

2010-11-27T11:34:00.001-08:00

The application of the death penalty is like a lottery because such a small percentage of murderers get the death penalty- 1 or 2 percent of the thousands who commit homicide every year. And of those receiving death sentences, only a fraction are executed. Most people think this one or two percent who go to death row must have committed the most heinous, pre meditated, cold-blooded murders, but you see in many, many of these cases panic murders by defendants who have a history of child abuse or have had head injuries or who are mentally retarded, or outright insane. - Helen Prejean

Robert Camus

2010-11-27T11:32:00.001-08:00

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 would believe this today. - Robert Camus

Russ Feingold

2010-05-31T21:47:00.001-07:00

It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can't leave behind something as primitive as government sponsored execution. - Russ Feingold

Ralph Nader

2010-05-31T21:46:00.001-07:00

Since I was a law student, I have been against the death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against minorities, especially since they’re given no competent legal counsel defense in many cases. It’s a system that has to be perfect. You cannot execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole - Ralph Nader

Anthony Kennedy

2010-05-31T21:45:00.001-07:00

When a juvenile commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity - Anthony Kennedy

William J. Brennan

2010-05-31T21:44:00.001-07:00

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

Jesse Ventura

2010-05-31T21:42:00.001-07:00

How come life in prison doesn't mean life? Until it does, we're not ready to do away with the death penalty. Stop thinking in terms of "punishment" for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers. - Jesse Ventura

Ramsey Clark

2010-05-31T21:41:00.001-07:00

A humane and generous concern for every individual, his health and his fulfillment, will do more to soothe the savage heart than the fear of state-inflicted death, which chiefly serves to remind us how close we remain to the jungle. - Ramsey Clark

John Kerry

2010-05-31T21:40:00.003-07:00

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

Al Gore

2010-05-31T21:40:00.001-07:00

I support the death penalty. I think that it has to be administered not only fairly, with attention to things like DNA evidence, which I think should be used in all capital cases, but also with very careful attention. If the wrong guy is put to death, then that’s a double tragedy. Not only has an innocent person been executed but the real perpetrator of the crime has not been held accountable for it, and in some cases may be still at large. But I support the death penalty in the most heinous cases. - Al Gore

John Paul Stevens

2010-05-30T22:52:00.001-07:00

I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated - John Paul Stevens

Stephen Bright

2010-05-30T22:51:00.001-07:00

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

Bryan Stevenson

2010-05-30T22:50:00.001-07:00

The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography and local politics - Bryan Stevenson

George Ryan

2010-05-30T22:49:00.003-07:00

[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

George Ryan

2010-05-30T22:49:00.001-07:00

In the US the overwhelming majority of those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. They frequently are raised in an impoverished and abusive environment. Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed - George Ryan

David Atwood

2010-05-30T22:48:00.001-07:00

When we don't fund Child Protective Services, there are consequences for all of us. Violence manifests itself. Mental health services in Texas are extremely poor. The answer is not to wait until they do something to get them help. - David Atwood