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
Strong Against Death Penalty quotations
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Justice is never advanced in the taking of human life.
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.
I can't talk politics with my cousin because he's such a hypocrite.
He's against the death penalty and he hanged himself.
Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.
I had concluded when I was the prosecutor that I would vote against the death penalty if I were in the legislature but that I could ask for it when I was satisfied as to guilt.
Embracing a certain quotient of racial bias and discrimination against the poor is an inexorable aspect of supporting capital punishment. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment.
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.
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.
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.
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.
The Bible identifies 15 crimes against the family worthy of the death penalty.
Abortion is treason against the family and deserves the death penalty. Adultery is treason to the family; adulterers should be put to death. Homosexuality is treason to the family, and it too, is worthy of death.
Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.
Now I am dedicating that life to campaigning against the death penalty and raising awareness about human rights.
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.
One of the first laws against air pollution came in 1300 when King Edward I decreed the death penalty for burning of coal. At least one execution for that offense is recorded. But economics triumphed over health considerations, and air pollution became an appalling problem in England.
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.
I am against the death penalty.
My overriding belief is that it is always possible for criminals to improve and that by its very finality the death penalty contradicts this.
From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
Sharia is the most oppressive system on earth.
It encourages people to lie, if it's for the benefits of Islam. It doesn't allow Muslims to leave Islam, and there's a death penalty in all the schools of Sharia against those that leave Islam. Sharia defines what jihad is.
I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished.
People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.
Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons.
No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor.
If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.
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.
The death penalty serves no one. It doesn't serve the victims. It doesn't serve prevention. It's truly all about retribution....There comes a time when you have to ask if a penalty that is so permanent can be available in such an imperfect system. The only guarantee against executing the innocent is to do away with the death penalty.
Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty... mine's putting in an express lane.
Prosecutors must reveal the dirty little secret they too often share only among themselves: The death penalty actually hinders the fight against crime.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
To top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole.
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.
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.