George Ryan Quotes

I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

The death penalty is being applied in the United States as a fatal lottery.

I am pro-death penalty, but not an enthusiastic death-penalty person. I think there's a place for it, that it should serve as a deterrent.

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.

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

I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race.

I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.

I cannot belong to a nation which permits such barbarities as stoning to death and amputation - I don't care what religion it is.

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.'

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

Michael Taylor is not being executed for homicide. Michael Taylor is being executed for raping a white female.

The death penalty is discriminatory and does not do anything about crime.

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'm actually really opposed to the death penalty.

I am against the death penalty.

'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 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?

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

It's wrong to kill.

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

I shall ask for the abolition for the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me.

This death sentence is not surprising. It had to be.

Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.

The risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence.

In fact, for all kinds of offenses - and, for no offenses - from murders to misdemeanors, men and women are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political excuse was no longer necessary, the wholesale murder of human beings went on just the same.