Anthony Ray Hinton Quotes

I was put on death row because of hate.

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

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

We've sent 130 men to death row to be executed in this country, at least 130 that we know of, who have later have been exonerated because they were either innocent, or they were not fairly tried. That's 130 people that we've locked down on death row. And they've spent years there.

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

The death penalty is as random as being struck by lightning.

It has become increasingly difficult for states or the federal government to apply the death penalty. But why even try? Nothing is accomplished, and while the chances of making a mistake are now diminished - DNA can prove guilt as well as innocence - life in prison is a worthy substitute.

The death penalty in the U.S. has become a political tool - and it should never be that.

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.

In death row every rule in society is flipped.

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

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

I don't think I would want the responsibility for enforcing the death penalties. There's always the inevitable question of whether someone you gave the order to execute might truly have been innocent.

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

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?

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

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.

The death penalty saves lives.

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

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

The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder.

The sorry path that remains for me to follow from an obscure prison to the gallows has been trodden by men with more merit than my own.

Malcolm is worthy of death.

I want to see if she is serious about the death penalty.

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.