Death Row Quotes

The death penalty is abolished – even at the front!

Those folks at Death Row were the Rolling Stones of their time.

Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.

When I signed on to letting the death penalty back in, I thought the procedural protections against executing an innocent person were stronger than they turned out to be.

I've never been under the illusion that everybody on death row is innocent - far from it. My own guess is upwards of 90 percent are guilty. But a ten percent error rate if that's what it is, or even five percent, is really way too high.

I’m not necessarily against the death penalty. But I am damn sure against the wrong man getting executed.

God himself instituted capital punishment as a remedy for certain crimes, at the very least murder…All life is so sacred that anyone who takes it is required to pay the same penalty.

All that's missing for Utah is a blindfold and a cigarette.

As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.

We cannot allow the spectacle of constant executions to be swept under the rug. We know that already over 100 individuals who were put on death row have been released. And we should shudder to think how many people have been sent to their deaths that were innocent.

I'm really trying to bring an end to the death penalty because it means so much to me.

Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.

Every time when there is an exoneration, and there have been hundreds of them, and somebody walks out of jail after years, people ask, “how could this happen?” …. State sanctioned killing is just wrong.

I don’t like the death penalty but it was the law in Ohio. Therefore as a prosecutor I sought the death penalty and as a judge I imposed the death penalty. It was the law and you have to obey the law.

If we are trying to establish a culture of life, it’s difficult to have the state sponsoring executions.

I represented a man on death row whose lawyers had spent all of eight hours looking into his claim of innocence. I met men whose lawyers had never looked into their backgrounds.

I was badly mauled by people in New York State for being against the death penalty for 12 years.

You get to know everyone on death row. You become friends with them and their families. I met some great guys. Everyone regrets what they did.

There is no deterrent effect whatsoever by the presence of the death penalty.

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.

I found that the death penalty  -  and I'm not a hot-button issue person, you know, I'm not a single issue person  -  but what I think drew me to the death penalty is because it raises some very deep, fundamental questions like: Is anybody beyond redemption?

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

The death penalty scares the hell out of me. We now see about one out of eight errors in these convictions.

Believe me, when you're sitting on death row, you want the appeal process to take time; as long as you're going through it, you're going to be alive.

I have lost no sleep over the possibility that an innocent man might be executed.