Eric Holder Quotes

Why is it that we go to immense lengths getting the Serbs who were responsible for the massacre of 7,000 at Srbrenica-that's slightly more than the total figure for New York 9/11-and we take them to a tribunal in The Hague, and one after another, we arraign them, try them, convict them, and punish them in front of the world, but no plans have been brought forward to get Osama bin Laden and his friends and put them on trial.

The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom. That's the reality. He will be killed by us, or he will be killed by his own people so he's not captured by us. We know that.

We as Americans believe it's OK to kill people. We believe it's OK to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. We think it's OK to invade a country where we think Osama Bin Laden is and he's in the other country. So we just go in and we just kill. And we have the death penalty; we sanction it.

We need to keep examining evilness. For instance, I'm totally against the fact that Osama bin Laden was shot. I think that he should have been put on trial and exposed as that human being he was. I think he should've been standing mentally naked in front of the rest of us and stand to justice for what he did.

They have the ability to take a person's freedom from them. On certain situations, they have the ability to take a person's reputation. And under certain circumstances, they have the authority to take a person's life.

We have made finality more important than fairness. We shield even clear violations of people's rights if objections aren't raised at the right time in the right way.

And let all the sheriffs make a list of all fugitives who have fled from their counties; and let them do this before the county courts, and they shall bring the names of these men in writing before the justices when first they come to them, in order that they may be sought throughout all England.

Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act.

No matter where they are in the world, those who commit crimes against U.S. citizens will be held accountable for their actions, pursued by our investigators and prosecutors, and brought to justice.

And we are in a strange conundrum. You can kill an American citizen overseas. But according to this administration, if you capture him in the United States, they've got to be read their Miranda rights.

Saddam Hussein is about to face trial and George Bush wants to execute him. Not because of the war crimes, but because Saddam is beating him in the polls.

Cyber terrorists are no different from other terrorists: No matter where they hide, we will track them down and seek to bring them to the United States to face justice.

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. If they did so, they couldn't be reelected.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

Conservatives should question how the death penalty actually works in order to stay true to small government, reduction in wasteful spending, and respect for human life.

I'm not bloodthirsty, but...seriously, she killed you. She needs to be dead.

Today, criminal justice functions and justifies itself only by this perpetual reference to something other than itself, by this unceasing reinscription in non-juridical systems.

There is no justice in killing in the name of justice.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head," said Peridan. "Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins." "It is very true," said Edmund. "But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did." And he looked very thoughtful.

The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode . . . .

Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one ... So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.

In many ways, we've been taught to think that the real question is, do people deserve to die for the crimes they've committed? And that's a very sensible question. But there's another way of thinking about where we are in our identity. The other way of thinking about it is not, do people deserve to die for the crimes they commit, but do we deserve to kill?

I hope we follow Mr. Snowden to the ends of the Earth to bring him to justice.

The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography and local politics.