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.
— Thurgood Marshall
Charming Capital Punishment quotations
What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Crimes against children are the most heinous crime.
That, for me, would be a reason for capital punishment because children are innocent and need the guidance of an adult society.
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.
Does capital punishment tend to the security of the people? By no means.
It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them; and it renders life insecure, inasmuch as the law holds out that property is of greater value than life.
Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.
The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment-or at least much handicap-to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.
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.
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.
Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment.
There's a group in California that wants to make suicide a capital offense punishable by death. That's like punishing someone for being on a hunger strike by sending them to bed with no supper.
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.
I think more people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.
I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about - nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund-raiser) because I don't want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern - legal and social equality for gay people worldwide.
Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.
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.
Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life.
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.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
As one reads history ... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.
To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.
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.
We don't know if capital punishment is a deterrent, but we know that men we execute will not murder again.
I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.
We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.
It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.
I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counterespionage and the law, and then prosecution and capital punishment.
I'm for capital punishment. You've got to execute people. How else are they going to learn?
But now inquiry is being made concerning these issues.
First, can any believer enlist in the military? Second, can any soldier, even those of the rank and file or lesser grades who neither engage in pagan sacrifices nor capital punishment, be admitted into the church? No on both counts.
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job.
I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished.
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.