Capital Crime Quotes

Public hangings [in England] were abolished in 1868. The last one took place outside Newgate Prison on 26 May of that same year. The man hanged was an Irish terrorist called Michael Barratt who had blown up the Clerkenwell House of Detention killing six people. A drunken crowd stayed up all night to witness the execution. They cheered wildly when the scaffold was brought out at dawn. More people – mainly young women and children – began to arrive. By the time a bell was sounded at eight o’clock in the morning to announce the arrival of the condemned man, the crowd stretched back as far as Smithfield.

Capital punishment is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime—for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold

Murder of a man by his wife was called treason (petty as distinguished from high treason), and was more cruelly avenged than was usually the case with high treason;

Regarding Jean-Francois Lefebvre, chevalier de La Barre, we declare him convicted of having taught to sing and sung impious, execrable and blasphemous songs against God; of having profaned the sign of the cross in making blessings accompanied by foul words which modesty does not permit repeating; of having knowingly refused the signs of respect to the Holy Sacrament carried in procession by the priory of Saint-Pierre … he will be taken …by the executioner who will attach before and behind him a sign on which will be written, in large letters impious one; and there, being on his knees, will confess his crimes...; this done, will have the tongue cut out and will then be taken … to the public marketplace of this city to have his head cut off on a scaffold; his body and his head will then be thrown on a pyre to be destroyed, burnt, reduced to ashes and these thrown to the wind.

I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty.

A good hanging now and then -- that entertains folk in the provinces and robs death of its glamour.

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

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.

The death penalty is barbaric. And I think we as a society need to come face-to-face with that. If we're not willing to face up to the cruelty, we ought not to be doing it.

While I live, every criminal must die.

First of all, it does not deter crime, the death penalty.

The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder.

I favor capital punishment. It saves lives.

I'm pro-death. I believe in the death penalty. Let's get on with it.

I think we ought to let him hang there. Let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind.

I support the death penalty because I believe, if administered swiftly and justly, capital punishment is a deterrent against future violence and will save other innocent lives.

What makes someone too mentally ill to be executed? There is no clean answer to this question. But the attempt to answer it consumes substantial resources. If capital punishment had a demonstrable impact on crime, it might make sense to struggle with such a difficult balancing. But any deterrent effect is trivial at best, so the effort devoted to these decisions is wasted.

It is easy not to support the death penalty when there is doubt about the culpability of the person sitting in the chair; it is harder to sustain such principles when the crime of the accused is morally indefensible.

We have a legal system, and we have a penal code. We have the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, and people should respect this.

Perhaps our Congress will be Exalted on a high Gallows

Drug dealers need to understand a simple fact. You shoot a cop and you're going to be severely punished—fast. And if I had my way, I'd say with your life.

Does capital punishment tend to the security of the people? By no means. It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them.

Arizona presents no specific reason for excepting capital defendants from the constitutional protections extended to defendants generally, and none is readily apparent.

The adulterer dies. An old custom, justice.

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society.