Tim Kaine Quotes

I don’t like the death penalty but it was the law in Ohio. Therefore as a prosecutor I sought the death penalty and as a judge I imposed the death penalty. It was the law and you have to obey the law.

'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.

Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life.

I was personally opposed to the death penalty, and yet I think I have probably asked for the death penalty more than most people in the United States.

Those who favor capital punishment do so in the name of justice. Can there be any argument against insisting that it be imposed justly—and not on the wrong people.

I will always be against the death penalty until the infallibility of human judgement is demonstrated to me.

I believe the death penalty demeans the values that form the core of American life.... Capital punishment is a terrible concession, a desperate response that substitutes one evil for another.... There is a better response to killing than killing.

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.

I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.

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.

I support the death penalty. But I also think there has to be no margin for error.

My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.

I'm actually really opposed to the death penalty.

You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.

Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.

I do not think that condemning people who murder and killing them necessarily sends out the right message.

Opponents of capital punishment argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparently, one fact that abolitionists forget or overlook is that the state is acting not only on behalf of society, but also on behalf of the murdered person and the murdered person's family.

I support capital punishment. But let's be clear: It's a decision for each state to make.

I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.

I would like to see capital punishment suppressed in all democracies.

Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.

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

If we are trying to establish a culture of life, it’s difficult to have the state sponsoring executions.

If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by our friends the murders.

The death penalty saves lives.