Dolores Ibarruri Quotes

It is better to destroy 100 innocent people than to let one guilty one escape.

I prefer a prison full of criminals than a graveyard full of innocent people.

The death penalty issue is obviously a divisive one. But whether one is for or against, you can not deny the basic illogic - if we know the system is flawed, if we know there are innocent people on Death Row, then until the system is reformed, should we not abandon the death penalty to protect those who are innocent?

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.

If you’re going to have the death penalty, you had better be sure that you have the right man.

All judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape

The net of law is spread so wide, No sinner from its sweep may hide. Its meshes are so fine and strong They take in every child of wrong. O wondrous web of mystery ! Big fish alone escape from thee !

Do I favor the death penalty? Theoretically, I do, but when you realize that there's a 4 percent error rate, you end up putting guilty people to death.

Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed?

Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.

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.

As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

I don't want to put one innocent person to death to put 99 that are guilty to death. So philosophically I'm a tooth-for-tooth guy, but the reality is the death penalty as public policy is flawed.

It's better to choose the culprits than to seek them out.

It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.

It is better that a guilty man should not be brought to trial than that he should be acquitted.

When a mad man is executed, it is a miserable spectacle, both against law, and of extreme inhumanity and cruelty, and can be no example to others.

I’m not necessarily against the death penalty. But I am damn sure against the wrong man getting executed.

There is always a political issue whenever you empower a state to kill its own citizens … the abuse of the power as in Europe of the 20th century is the problem …. If we believe that some people ought to receive the death penalty for their crimes, there appears to be no way of executing the ones who should receive the death penalty without sweeping in ones who do not.

I feel morally and intellectually required to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.

The innocent are frequently punished instead of the guilty

One would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally.

It is easy not to support the death penalty when there is doubt about the culpability of the person sitting in the chair; it is harder to sustain such principles when the crime of the accused is morally indefensible.

I therefore believe that our system does not have a word for failed trial, and that is where the American public does not realize that our criminal justice system sometimes makes mistakes.