Scott Turow Quotes

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.

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 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.

I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: (1) Irreversibility in the event of an error in justice; (2) detrimental moral influence on those who have to carry out the procedure.

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

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

I found that the death penalty  -  and I'm not a hot-button issue person, you know, I'm not a single issue person  -  but what I think drew me to the death penalty is because it raises some very deep, fundamental questions like: Is anybody beyond redemption?

I am more optimistic though, that this court will eventually conclude that the effort to eliminate arbitrariness while preserving fairness in the infliction of [death] is so plainly doomed to failure that is - and the death penalty - must be abandoned altogether. I may not live to see that day, but I have faith that eventually it will arrive.

And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York, is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted, and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.

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

I'm actually really opposed to the death penalty.

The crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.

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

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

It is better to kill one hundred innocents than to let one guilty person go.

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

You don't know what the [ethical] rules are until the gallows pull up in front of your door and they drag you out to hang you.

A murder is not a martyr. He or she is just a murderer.

I believe that capital punishment serves no useful purpose and is a form of revenge.

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

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

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.

The fact is that our administration of the criminal law has as nearly reached perfection in guarding the innocent (and guilty) from conviction as is possible for any human institution; but in securing the safety and order of the community by the conviction of the guilty it is woefully inadequate.

As a society are we going to murder people to show that murder is wrong

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.