William Bennett Quotes
I would have no moral objection to publicly beheading drug dealers.
William Bennett Director, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Secretary of Education (Republican), Quoted by Radley Balko, Book TV, August 10, 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In 1812 England was in a major depression and workers were breaking their weaving frames in protest. Parliament was debating a bill that would provide the death penalty for such activity. 6th Baron Byron
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.
Elliott had electrocuted over 400 condemned criminals including Sacco and Vanzetti and the first woman who was electrocuted.
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.
In his early career, her supported capital punishment, but changed his mind as can be seen in this quotation.
There was, and still is in some parts of the world, this belief taht one of the main reasons for capital punioshment with visible and public executions was to deter others from comitting crimes by seeing the example of what happens to the transgressors. For these people, exemplified by this quotation of Dr. Johnson's, public executions are crime prevention. This notion tirned out to have been a fallacy. In England they found that during every public hanging, skilled pickpockets would steal from the onlookers who were tranfixed on the macabre secene--this despite the fact that pickpocketing was a hanging offence.
William John Bennett is an American conservative pundit, politician, and political theorist, who served as Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. He also held the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under George H. W. Bush.
