George W. Bush Quotes

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

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

Some wonder why I have such a feeling of concern over the imposition of the death penalty. I ask those who wonder how would you feel if you defended a man charged with murder, who was as innocent as any hon. member in this House at this very moment, who was convicted; whose appeal was dismissed, who was executed; and six months later the star witness for the Crown admitted that he, himself, had committed the murder and blamed it on the accused? That experience will never be effaced from my memory.

I have lost no sleep over the possibility that an innocent man might be executed.

When I signed on to letting the death penalty back in, I thought the procedural protections against executing an innocent person were stronger than they turned out to be.

This case has had full analyzation and has been looked at a lot. I understand the emotionality of death penalty cases.

I don't agree with capital punishment as it is now, because too often mistakes are made. But I think that if you eliminate the mistakes, then there are times when it is justified.

I don't think I would want the responsibility for enforcing the death penalties. There's always the inevitable question of whether someone you gave the order to execute might truly have been innocent.

Everybody believes that capital punishment is wrong, but when they look at certain cases, they're quick to say, 'Put them to death,' or scream 'capital punishment.'

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

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?

To have the truth in your possession you can be found guilty, sentenced to death.

I hear they burn for murder. Well, they say it just takes a second to die.

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

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.

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

You have been tried by twelve good men and true, not of your peers but as high above you as heaven is of hell, and they have said you are guilty. Time will pass and seasons will come and go. Spring with its waving green grass and heaps of sweet-smelling flowers on every hill and in every dale. Then sultry Summer, with her shimmering heat-waves on the baked horizon. And Fall, with her yeller harvest moon and the hills growing brown and golden under a sinking sun. And finally Winter, with its biting, whining wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow. But you won't be here to see any of 'em; not by a damn sight, because it's the order of this court that you be took to the nearest tree and hanged by the neck till you're dead, dead, dead, you olive-colored son of a billy goat.

The death penalty scares the hell out of me. We now see about one out of eight errors in these convictions.

The death penalty experiment has failed …. I will no longer tinker with the machinery of death.

If I had had the slightest doubt, I certainly would not have imposed the death penalty.

Malcolm is worthy of death.

They could hang people for what's in there.

The system of death-penalty justice is compromised and inequitable.

And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accused by God; you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.

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.