Patricia Cornwell Quotes

I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.

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

I believe that the death penalty is an effective penalty.

The death penalty does absolutely nothing to deter crime.

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.

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

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

Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty... mine's putting in an express lane.

Capital punishment is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime—for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold

I think in some instances that the death penalty is required.

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

We're also the only country that has the Death Penalty. That's something to boast about, isn't it?

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.'

Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but is serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment.

I'm actually really opposed to the death penalty.

I am against the death penalty.

What makes someone too mentally ill to be executed? There is no clean answer to this question. But the attempt to answer it consumes substantial resources. If capital punishment had a demonstrable impact on crime, it might make sense to struggle with such a difficult balancing. But any deterrent effect is trivial at best, so the effort devoted to these decisions is wasted.

The death penalty saves lives.

I will make Mississippi the capital of capital punishment.

In executing prisoners we merely add to the number of untimely dead without diminishing the number of murders committed.

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

I favor capital punishment. It saves lives.

My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty.

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

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