Woody Allen Quotes
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
Woody Allen, Comedian, Frequent Quip
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was one of the longest serving District Attorneys in America, He also served the largest jurisdiction of a District Attorney. When he first was elected DA of Manhattan there were over 600 murders a year. When he retired, there were only about 60, a 90% reduction. Yet, his experience was that capital punishment was useless in deterring murder. He had many other techniques far more effective.
This has been the case in EVERY jurisdiction that has had capital punishment. Capital punishment does provide vengeance for victims, relatives and society. And in many societies execution is less expensive than prison for life. But it has never curtailed crime despite the example. In London, they used to have public executions as examples to inhibit crime. While the crowd was watching a pickpocket be hung, other pickpockets were relieving many spectators of their wallets and watches.
Sherman was distressed at the full due process and trials that had to be given to Confederate spies and guerrillas and wanted to execute them quickly as an example. He complained to the Judge Advocate General that his men were “losing prisoners in the swamp” which both of them realized meant the immediate execution of prisoners by soldiers and junior officers which Sherman did not like either. The Lincoln administration insisted on the full due process. Even after conviction, President Abraham Lincoln tended to pardon many of the condemned.
1st Marquees of Halifax. Even in the 18th century, it was realized that capital punishment was not a particularly good deterrent. Savile and others observed that there was a significant vengeance motive for state execution.
The most common example that capital punishment does not work as a deterrent is that while thieves were being hung for their crime, other thieves would circulate among the watching crowd at the scaffold and pickpocket the observers.
Woody Allen is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career as a comedy writer on Sid Caesar's comedy variety program, Your Show of Shows, working alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart and Neil Simon. He also began writing material for television, published several books featuring short stories, and writing humor pieces for The New Yorker. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian in Greenwich Village alongside Lenny Bruce, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, and Joan Rivers. There he developed a monologue style (rather than traditional jokes), and the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish. He released three comedy albums during the mid to late 1960s, earning a Grammy Award nomination for his 1964 comedy album entitled simply, Woody Allen. In 2004 Comedy Central ranked Allen fourth on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians, while a UK survey ranked Allen the third-greatest comedian.
