Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

The death penalty serves no one. It doesn't serve the victims. It doesn't serve prevention. It's truly all about retribution....There comes a time when you have to ask if a penalty that is so permanent can be available in such an imperfect system. The only guarantee against executing the innocent is to do away with the death penalty.

The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment... It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society.

The death penalty experiment has failed.

As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

Our emotions may cry for vengeance in the wake of a horrible crime, but we know that killing the criminal will not undo the crime, will not prevent similar crimes by others, does not benefit the victim, destroys human life and brutalizes society. If we are to still violence, we must cherish life. Executions cheapen life.

I'm for capital punishment. You've got to execute people. How else are they going to learn?

Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.

'Reversible Errors' is about the limits of the law to define who committed ultimate evil, to define what ultimate evil is, to allow the million arbitrary factors to make this a meaningful punishment, and finally to say, 'Are we really accomplishing what we wanted to accomplish? Are those anxieties relieved?' I don't think so.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

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

The argument most often cited in support of capital punishment is that the threat of executions deters capital crimes more effectively than imprisonment. This claim is plausible, but the facts do not support it. The death penalty fails as a deterrent

The death penalty does absolutely nothing to deter crime.

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.

I tell myself that I had simply better accept the fact that the death penalty is here to stay in our society, at least for a while, and there is nothing I can do about it. Maybe, in time- after how many executions? - people will come to realize the futility of randomly selecting a few people to die each year.

By requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.

Does capital punishment tend to the security of the people? By no means. It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them; and it renders life insecure, inasmuch as the law holds out that property is of greater value than life.

The death penalty makes us all murderers.

I have inquired for most of my adult life, about studies that might show that the death penalty is a deterrent, and I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point.

With respect to the death penalty, I believe that a majority of the Supreme Court will one day accept that when the state punishes with death, it denies the humanity and dignity of the victim and transgresses the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That day will be a great day for our country, for it will be a great day for our Constitution.

Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society. I reject the notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true - that savagery begets only savagery.

Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.

Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.

Requiring that an execution be relatively painless...actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.