Proportionality of Punishment Quotes

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.

Defendants are being evaluated based on numerical grid without any aggravating circumstances being considered. The effect has been to transfer the disparity from the judge to the prosecutor allowing for a great deal of leeway on indictments.

The State may, indeed, make the drinking of one drop of liquor an offense to be punished by imprisonment, but it would be an unheard-of cruelty if it should count the drops in a single glass and make thereby a thousand offenses, and thus extend the punishment for drinking the single glass of liquor to any imprisonment of almost indefinite duration.

Maimonides taught that it is better that 10 criminals go free than let one innocent man be executed. The Innocence Project represents that point of view.

While I oppose the death penalty as a policy matter, in a legal culture in which we reserve the right to execute people for relatively routine street crimes, it seems quite absurd for the justice system to get squeamish about executing the operational masterminds of Sept. 11.

Now, I - for several years while I was researching this book, I felt quite obsessed by thoughts about sentencing, punishment, how judges arrive at their decisions.

A convict is not to be scourged until the flesh fall from his body and he die under the lash, though he may have committed a hundred offenses, for each of which, separately, a whipping of twenty stripes might be inflicted.

I come from the liberal side of thinking: Better one guilty man should walk free than one innocent man found guilty.

If, as is contended by the advocates of “deterrence,” cruelty in punishment is justified by the “deterrent” effect which these persons credit it with, then surely the rack, the wheel, and the thumbscrew are the last word of penal wisdom. If hanging and the plank-bed are “deterrent” and hence justifiable, then … the stake and the rack are more “deterrent” and hence more justifiable.

I feel strongly about the sanctity of life, and I have argued against the death penalty. But I believe as an individual justice I can make a determination based on issues and not on preconceived notions.

There is a separation - a very clear separation - between the judiciary, the legal system, and the political system in this country, and that's why Labor has a problem with the issue of mandatory sentencing as a principle.

A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.

We need to look at the totality of the things that we're labeling as violent and really examine whether we need to have some more proportionality in terms of the punishment fitting the crime that's done. The bright line that we have right now, between violent and nonviolent, does not account for shades of gray.

These people have served a longer sentence than some people who have committed murder.

I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us.

We cannot and should not repeal Article 17. We have to allow for the individualization of punishment and we have to take into consideration the emotional state of the perpetrator when he committed the crime. This prerogative is given to judges in the West as well.

I would like to see capital punishment suppressed in all democracies.