William J. Brennan Jr. Quotes

In order that punishment should not be an act of violence perpetrated by one or many upon a private citizen, it is essential that it should be public, speedy, necessary, the minimum possible in the given circumstances, proportionate to the crime, and determined by the law.

No cruel and unusual punishment is to be inflicted? It is sometimes necessary to hang a man. Villains often deserve whipping and perhaps having their ears cut off. But are we in the future to be prevented from inflicting these punishments because they are cruel?

In revenge and punishments we must have our eye not at the evill past, but the future good. That is: It is not lawfull to inflict punishment for any other end, but that the offender may be corrected, or that others warned by his punishment may become better

Societies have debated the severity of punishment for vile acts over millennia, with complex moral arguments on both sides of the question. But citizens and society should pay more attention to the trend of over-criminalisation of common human failings and frailties.

The act of policing is, in order to punish less often, to punish more severely.

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

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the U.S., if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'

Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but is serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment.

It's absolutely clear that whatever cruel and unusual punishments may - may mean with regard to future things, such as death by injection or the electric chair, it's clear that - that the death penalty, in and of itself, is not considered cruel and unusual punishment.

I am against the death penalty.

I don't believe in killing people. I believe in locking you up for the rest of your life.

The consequences of a crime should not be out of proportion to the crime itself.

If you are sentenced to torture for a crime, yes, that is a cruel punishment. But the mere fact that somebody is tortured is - is unlawful under - under our statutes, but the Constitution happens not to address it, just as it does not address a lot of other horrible things.

In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.

I'm not in favor of the death penalty. But I'm in favor of locking these people away in maximum security units where they can never get out. They can never escape. They can never be paroled. Lock the bad ones away. But you gotta rethink everybody else.

We want a state of things in which crime will not pay.

Criminals are punished, that others may be deterred.

Of all the remedies a civilized society uses to punish people for committing a crime, I don't think killing people is one of them.

It [the death penalty] is a phony issue. To pretend the death penalty is going to end crime in the United States is to fool people, to promote public ignorance.

The death penalty serves social justice.

I am a proponent of capital punishment. I am not a proponent of capital torture.

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.

Any punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly employed. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions.

I'd rather lock somebody up and throw away the key and put them in hard labor, the ultimate penalty that the law will allow, but I'm opposed to the death penalty

Severity of punishment is not the cure for crime. Certainty and promptness of punishment rather than severity are more effective. There was a time, as we all know, when in England considerably more than two hundred separate offenses were punishable by death. Nevertheless, that period was one of the most lawless and violent known to history. The utter failure of the drastic technique in the suppression of crime is universally acknowledged.