Harry A. Blackmun Quotes

I feel morally and intellectually required to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.

It's ironic that the Bible belt is the killing belt - Texas, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, and so forth, Georgia. Chief executioners.

The death penalty is inhumane... whether that person is in a [jail] or it's bin Laden.

The death penalty experiment has failed.

The sole motivating factor behind the death penalty is vengeance, not justice, and I firmly believe that a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of killing people itself.

I didn't just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.

Capital punishment? It makes no sense as a policy: It's not a deterrent, and economically it's a disaster. It's very clear that there are innocent people on death row. And if I put an innocent person to death, that's murder.

As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, 'Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?' We knew the answer: No.

The death penalty is becoming a way of life in this country.

The death penalty saves lives.

I will make Mississippi the capital of capital punishment.

If we as a society are willing to take human life, then we should be willing to watch it being taken.

At some point in this death-penalty debate, the sanctity of innocent life demands that men and women of conservative conscience have to say: Enough.

I feel capitol punishment is dooming U.S.A.

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.

Capital punishment, that thing scares me, it really does. I was talking to my friend about the electric chair, and he starts freakin' out. He's like 'the electric chair? That's too good for these people. That's too good for them'. Alright, how do we make the electric chair worse? How about this? They have to pedal a car battery to their own head. Is that ok? Is that enough, Mr. Hitler?

I want to accelerate, not slow down, the enforcement of the death penalty in Florida.

Most people are not affected by [the death penalty]. It's like how many people are actually sent to Iraq and Afghanistan? Such a small percentage.

In Texas, we have the death penalty, and we use it. That's right. If you come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back.

It seems there are no rich on death row.

Standing alone among great democratic nations in imposing the death penalty is another moral decision that Americansare being forced to confront.

Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.

Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society.

The death penalty is barbaric. And I think we as a society need to come face-to-face with that. If we're not willing to face up to the cruelty, we ought not to be doing it.