Benjamin Wittes Quotes
While I oppose the death penalty as a policy matter, in a legal culture in which we reserve the right to execute people for relatively routine street crimes, it seems quite absurd for the justice system to get squeamish about executing the operational masterminds of Sept. 11.
Wittes, Benjamin. Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror. Penguin Press, 2008.
Elliott had electrocuted over 400 condemned criminals including Sacco and Vanzetti and the first woman who was electrocuted.
The capital punishment debate was raging in Europe. Belgium and parts of Switzerland had just abolished the death penalty.
Rosemary Barkett, Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, was nominated to the U. S. Court of Appeals. In her previous role she had upheld over 200 death sentences. Nonetheless, Senator Hatch, an advocate of capital punishment, held up her swift confirmation.
This has been the case in EVERY jurisdiction that has had capital punishment. Capital punishment does provide vengeance for victims, relatives and society. And in many societies execution is less expensive than prison for life. But it has never curtailed crime despite the example. In London, they used to have public executions as examples to inhibit crime. While the crowd was watching a pickpocket be hung, other pickpockets were relieving many spectators of their wallets and watches.
Benjamin Wittes is an American legal journalist and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he is the Research Director in Public Law, and Co-Director of the Harvard Law School–Brookings Project on Law and Security. He works principally on issues related to American law and national security. Along with Robert M. Chesney and Jack Goldsmith, Wittes cofounded the Lawfare Blog. Wittes is also a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. Wittes is a frequent speaker on topics of detention, interrogation, and national security, before academic, government, policy, and military audiences. He also co-hosts the Rational Security podcast.
