Marquis de Lafayette Quotes

'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.

The death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, and the appeals process is expensive and cruel to the surviving family members.

I support the death penalty. But I also think there has to be no margin for error.

Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons.

I am against the death penalty.

I'm pro-death penalty, but what I have not seen is anybody that would mock someone on death row.

I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: (1) Irreversibility in the event of an error in justice; (2) detrimental moral influence on those who have to carry out the procedure.

Everybody believes that capital punishment is wrong, but when they look at certain cases, they're quick to say, 'Put them to death,' or scream 'capital punishment.'

It's absolutely clear that whatever cruel and unusual punishments may - may mean with regard to future things, such as death by injection or the electric chair, it's clear that - that the death penalty, in and of itself, is not considered cruel and unusual punishment.

I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.

The death penalty issue is obviously a divisive one. But whether one is for or against, you can not deny the basic illogic - if we know the system is flawed, if we know there are innocent people on Death Row, then until the system is reformed, should we not abandon the death penalty to protect those who are innocent?

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.

First of all, it does not deter crime, the death penalty.

Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty... mine's putting in an express lane.

The death penalty experiment has failed …. I will no longer tinker with the machinery of death.

Malcolm is worthy of death.

I don't get any damn pleasure out of the death penalty and I never have .... If they abolished it tomorrow, I'd go out and get drunk in celebration.

I will always be against the death penalty until the infallibility of human judgement is demonstrated to me.

The death penalty confronts us with a penetrating moral question: Can even the monstrous crimes of those who are condemned to death and are truly guilty of such crimes erase their sacred dignity as human beings and their intrinsic right to life?

I don't agree with capital punishment as it is now, because too often mistakes are made. But I think that if you eliminate the mistakes, then there are times when it is justified.

My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty.

The death penalty, I think, is a terrible scar on American justice, especially the concept of equal justice under law, but also of due process. And it goes state by state, and it's different in different states.

I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.

But I'm not pro death penalty. I - I'm just anti the notion that it is not a matter for democratic choice, that it has been taken away from the democratic choice of the people by a provision of the Constitution.