Death Penalty Abolition Quotes

Personally, I am opposed to capital punishment. . . . If there were some way devised to prevent . . . the extension of executive clemency to men who are sent up for life, if there were some way to keep them in for life, then I believe the public would be satisfied with the abolition of capital punishment. . . . In 1907 I was appointed to prosecute a man for one of the foulest cases of wife murder that I ever knew. . . . When the jury went out the first ballot was eleven for hanging and one for life imprisonment. . . . The second ballot was twelve for life imprisonment. . . . It is not seventeen years since I tried that case and yet this man is walking the streets to-day a free man by the action of some subsequent governor of Indiana, who pardoned or paroled over my protest. There will either have to be some way provided to keep these fellows in for life when they are once sent there, or those of us who are opposed to hanging will have to give our unwilling consent to the execution of these wilful and deliberate murderers.

A reform in the system of criminal jurisprudence, by which the death penalty shall no longer be inflicted; and by which, during that term, a portion of the prison employment shall be for, and the product thereof be faithfully paid over to, the support of the criminal’s family; and by which our so-called prisons shall be virtually transformed into vast reformatory workshops, from which the unfortunate may emerge to be useful members of society, instead of the alienated citizens they now are.

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

It has become increasingly difficult for states or the federal government to apply the death penalty. But why even try? Nothing is accomplished, and while the chances of making a mistake are now diminished - DNA can prove guilt as well as innocence - life in prison is a worthy substitute.

For justice to have any meaning, it must also mean that no innocent person should ever be executed.

The United States sets the example for the rest of the world. But we are not in league with most of the most of the rest of the world on the death penalty. We are in league with China and Saudi Arabia.

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.

I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.

A growing number of courts outside the United States--- courts that accept or assume the lawfulness of the death penalty--- have held that lengthy delay in administering a lawful death penalty renders the ultimate execution inhuman, degrading, or unusually cruel.”

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

The Catholic understanding has been that the death penalty has been become, like, outdated because in industrialized countries. We have other ways of protecting societies from dangerous people without killing them. And in fact, it's important to remember that much of the world has done away with the death penalty.