# Capital punishment

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences. At various times, the execution of criminals and political opponents was used by nearly all societies both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent.
Arranged alphabetically by author or source: A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

## A

* The abolition of capital punishment, surely coming, is delayed by God's edict, "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," and God's servants have ever been the opponents of this humane reform. Witchcraft has been believed in and men and women have been killed because God said, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
** Robert Chamblet Adams, Good Without God. P. Eckler. 1902. p. 42.

## B

* The punishment of death is pernicious to society, from the example of barbarity it affords. If the passions, or the necessity of war, have taught men to shed the blood of their fellow creatures, the laws, which are intended to moderate the ferocity of mankind, should not increase it by examples of barbarity, the more horrible as this punishment is usually attended with formal pageantry. Is it not absurd, that the laws, which detest and punish homicide, should, in order to prevent murder, publicly commit murder themselves?
** Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 1764
* Death is an unusually severe and degrading punishment; there is a strong probability that it is inflicted arbitrarily; its rejection by contemporary society is virtually total; and there is no reason to believe that it serves any penal purpose more effectively than the less severe punishment of imprisonment. The function of these principles is to enable a court to determine whether a punishment comports with human dignity. Death, quite simply, does not. When this country was founded, memories of the Stuart horrors were fresh and severe corporal punishments were common. Death was not then a unique punishment. The practice of punishing criminals by death, moreover, was widespread and by and large acceptable to society. Indeed, without developed prison systems, there was frequently no workable alternative. Since that time, successive restrictions, imposed against the background of a continuing moral controversy, have drastically curtailed the use of this punishment. Today death is a uniquely and unusually severe punishment.
** William J. Brennan, Jr., Opinion in Furman v. Georgia, 1972, as quoted in Historic Documents of 1972. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
* Bran Stark: Our way is the old way.
* Ned Stark: The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.
   * David Bonioff and D.B. Weiss, "Winter is Coming", Game of Thrones, (April 17, 2011)

## C

* Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.
** Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1961).
* A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge.
** Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1961).
* What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?
** Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1961).
* In the disposition of capital cases in the United States, the median elapsed time between sentence and execution is approximately seventeen months. [...] However, even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune [...].
** Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, part 4
* The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor. "If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. "Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.' [John Paul II, Evangelium vitae 56.]
** Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2267, Archived October 8, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
* Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?
** Anton Chekhov, The banker in The Bet, Works, vol. 7, p. 229, “Nauka” <1254>
* Yeah, modern life may be monotonous with its 9-5 work week and overcrowded morning commutes; but you should be thankful you only have to suffer this and not some of the most brutal execution techniques in history. Fire up Wikipedia or any website on historical capital punishment and you'll swiftly learn that humanity has been responsible for some of the most depraved ways of torturing and killing each other over the years.
** Brenna Cooper of LADbible Group (January 23, 2025)

## D

* To the left of the stairway was an opaque glass door with a sign that read: SOCIETY FOR THE ABOLISHMENT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. The door was locked but the next morning, I knew, the stiff-looking lady with the bleached blond hair would be back at her typewriter. What did one do to abolish capital punishment? I wondered. I had asked Father one day what capital punishment meant. "Killing," said Father, "but they are wasting their time." How strange, I had thought, to waste one's time sitting at a typewriter all day long to abolish something that was already against the law.
** Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, A Houseful of Love, Ch. 1
* The chief and worst pain may not be in the the bodily suffering but in one's knowing for certain that in an hour, and then in ten minutes, and then in half a minute, and then now, at the very moment, the soul will leave the body and that one will cease to be a man and that that's bound to happen; the worst part of it is that it's certain. When you lay your head down under the knife and hear the knife slide over your head, that quarter of a second is the most terrible of all. You know this is not only my imagination, many people have said the same. I believe that so thoroughly that I'll tell you what I think To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.
** Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot, Ch. 2, Prince Myshkin.

## E

* The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?
** Roger Ebert, "Mr. Death: The Rise And Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.", Chicago Sun-Times, 4 February 2000.
* I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: 1) Irreparability in the event of an error of justice, 2) Detrimental moral influence of the execution procedure on those who, whether directly or indirectly, have to do with the procedure.
** Albert Einstein "Albert Einstein-The human side", Princeton University Press, 1979, p.83.

## F

* No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
** Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.
** Pope Francis, Holy See Press Office. “New Revision of Number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Death Penalty – Rescriptum ‘ex Audentia SS.mi,’ 02.08.2018.” August 2, 2018
* I still support the death penalty — not because it’s a deterrent or a fitting act of vengeance, but because, properly carried out, it is the only penalty that truly reflects the enormous value of innocent life. There are times when it is the only punishment that truly fits the crime. It is for this reason that the same scriptures that so clearly direct the children of Israel to “choose life” also direct that “whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” Nor was the power of the sword taken from government by the New Testament. To the contrary, in Romans 13, Paul explicitly acknowledges that the power of the sword should rest with government, and that it holds “terror” for those who do wrong.
** David French, The Death Penalty Helps Preserve the Dignity of Life, National Review, August 10, 2018

## G

* I would draw distinction between killing and detention and even corporal punishment. I think there is a difference not merely in quantity but also in quality. I can recall the punishment of detention. I can make reparation to the man upon whom I inflict corporal punishment. But once a man is killed, the punishment is beyond recall or reparation. God alone can take life, because He alone gives it.
** Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, 8th November 1925. Quoted in Bishan Sarup Sharma, Gandhi as a Political Thinker, Indian Press, 1956 (p.108).
* The pain was maddening. You should pray to God when you're dying, if you can pray when you're in agony. In my dream I didn't pray to God, I thought of Roger and how dearly I loved him. The pain of those wicked flames was not half so bad as the pain I felt when I knew he was dead. I felt suddenly glad to be dying. I didn't know when you were burnt to death you'd bleed. I thought the blood would all dry up in the terrible heat. But I was bleeding heavily. The blood was dripping and hissing in the flames. I wished I had enough blood to put the flames out. The worst part was my eyes. I hate the thought of gong blind. It's bad enough when I'm awake but in dreams you can't shake the thoughts away. They remain. In this dream I was going blind. I tried to close my eyelids but I couldn't. They must have been burnt off, and now those flames were going to pluck my eyes out with their evil fingers, I didn't want to go blind. The flames weren't so cruel after all. They began to feel cold. Icy cold. It occurred to me that I wasn't burning to death but freezing to death.
** Arthur Guirdham in The Cathars and Reincarnation, p. 89
* Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.
** Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Modes and Morals, ch. 7 (1920).
* If we could do away with death, we wouldn’t object; to do away with capital punishment will be more difficult. Were that to happen, we would reinstate it from time to time.
** Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, from Makarie’s Archive (1829).

## H

* Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life.
** Orrin Hatch, quoted from David Milsted, The Cassell Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations (1999)
* Death penalty is the special and eternal sign of barbarism. Where death penalty is applied, barbarism dominates; where death penalty is rare, civilisation reigns.
** Victor Hugo, National Constituant Assembly of the French Republic, 15 September 1848.
* Three things belong to God and do not belong to men: the irrevocable, the irreparable and the indissoluble. Woe to men if they introduce it in their laws!
** Victor Hugo, National Constituant Assembly of the French Republic, 15 September 1848.
* ... Like lightning the swords fell on the outermost prisoners, then on the three by their sides, and so on the next rows in rapid succession The knives were used but in two or three instances in cutting off those heads which had not fallen at the first blow. Everything was over in a minute or two. The Mandarins had moved off with their escort, the executioners followed them into the city, when as customary, friends or relations appeared with coffins and removed some of the bodies, others being carried for burial in a potter's field on the east side of the city. The prisoners on these occasions are brought to the ground in new suits of blue cotton cloth, which become the property of the burial party, while one or two heads are thrown into a large cage of iron bars, on one side of the execution ground, and left there as a warning to evil-doers. It is a well-known and a remarkable fact, that substitutes may often be found for a very small sum to undergo the last penalty. Men appear at the prison and offer themselves, instigated by some such such motive as the extreme poverty of aged parents, to whom the money agreed upon shall be paid after the execution. This is looked upon as a proof of filial piety, one of the first virtues, and as the law is satisfied, a life for a life, the arrangement is granted by the authorities, except in cases of treason to the Imperial Government, when the more frightful penalty is inflicted called 'Ling-che,' or cutting into small pieces. This punishment is also imposed in cases of parricide or matricide, and no substitute allowed.
** William C. Hunter, Bits of Old China (2nd ed.). Kegan Paul, Trench, & Company. 1885. pp. 165–166. (1st edition 1855; The excerpt is based on Hunter's eyewitness account of an execution in Canton. At age 13, William Charles Hunter (1812–1891) went to China and eventually was employed by Russell & Company, where he became a partner in 1837.)

## K

* “For the most part, executions happen in obscurity. If people did hear about executions, if they were publicized, even televised, I fear more would enjoy them than be repelled by them.”
** Wendy Kaminer,"6/24/95 Wendy Kaminer on Crime" (24 June 1995)
* You guys in AZ are life savers.
** Scott Kernan of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, upon being resupplied with sodium thiopental from the Arizona Department of Corrections to carry out lethal injection, The Washington Post, 9 December 2010.
* Yea, such is the law of England, the tenderest law in the world of a man's life. I say again, that no such trial for life is to be found in the world, as in England. In any place but in England, a man's life may be taken away upon two or three witnesses; but in England two or three witnesses do not do it: For there are two juries besides, and you have four-and-twenty men returned; you have one-and-twenty men upon their oaths and consciences that have found you guilty: And yet when you have done that, it is not enough by the law of England, but you are also to have twelve rational understanding men of your neighbours to hear all over again, and to pass upon your life. This is not used in any law in the world but in England, which hath the most righteous and most merciful law in the world.
** Lord Keble, C.J., Lilburne's Case (1649), 4 How. St. Tr. 1311; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 240-241.
* I do not think God approves the death penalty for any crime—rape and murder included. God’s concern is to improve individuals and bring them to the point of conversion. Even criminology has repudiated the motive of punishment in favor of the reformation of the criminal. Shall a good God harbor resentment? Since the purpose of jailing a criminal is that of reformation rather than retribution—improving him rather than paying him back for some crime that he has done—it is highly inconsistent to take the life of a criminal. How can he improve if his life is taken? Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.
** Martin Luther King Jr., Advice for Living, 1957
* Death penalty: The death penalty will not solve the problem of crime, but it is more than merely symbolic. There are some people who commit murder that so subvert society that they deserve nothing less than a death sentence. I believe, as does the Supreme Court, that some people will be deterred by it.
** Ed Koch, Ed Koch on Everything (1994), p. 61
* There has to be a risk of the death sentence in order for 'mastery' to exist.
** Alexandre Kojève, The Notion of Authority (2020) [1942], p. 79
* We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.
** Nikolai Krylenko, as quoted by Richard Pipes in The Russian Revolution; page 822.

## L

* Land said that he, like most Southern Baptists, support the death penalty with certain caveats. “If you are going to support the death penalty then you have to be as supportive of its equitable and just application,” Land said, suggesting it is immoral to support it otherwise. A person is much more likely to be executed if they are poor rather than wealthy, a person of color and a man, he added.
** Richard Land in Baptist Press "Sparks fly in Land's appearance at black columnists’ meeting" Archived June 15, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
* Lethal injection was initially seen as a more humane option than the electric chair in administering the death penalty. Unfortunately, according to Oliver, that is simply not the case. This is due in part to the fact that lethal injections are performed by “amateurs,” according to Oliver, because medical personnel cannot be involved in executions as they violate their ethical codes. The other reason has to do with the combination of drugs given during executions. There’s an anesthetic, a paralytic, which reportedly can make people feel like they are suffocating while awake, and the final dose which feels like “fire in your veins” before it puts the person into cardiac arrest.
** Melissa Locker, “'There's No Way to Do This and Make It Okay.' John Oliver Talks Lethal Injection on Last Week Tonight”, Time, (5/5/2019); quoting John Oliver, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, (5/5/2019).

## M

* Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma.... As you sow, so shall you reap. It's a very old proverb of mankind... Sometime you may have killed that man, and then sometime now he comes to kill you... What we have done, the result of that comes to us whenever it comes, either today, tomorrow, hundred years later, hundred lives later, whatever, whatever. And so, it's our own karma... That is why that philosophy in every religion: Killing is sin. Killing is sin in every religion. Whosoever sins, whoever is killed, it doesn't matter. It's a sin. And sin.. is a punishable offense. Because when you sin, when you've killed some man, what you are killing? You are killing the cosmic potential within the individual. Individual is cosmic. Individual potential of life is cosmic potential. Individual is divine deep inside. Transcendental experience awakens that divinity in man... When you kill a man like that you deprive him from getting to his human right.
** Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in CNN Larry King Weekend:Interview With Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, (2002)
* The burning of the house of the offender is not a permissible punishment for arson. The rape of the offender is not a permissible punishment of a rapist. Why should murder be a permissible punishment for murder?
** Ismail Mahomed, S v Makwanyane, (6 June 1995).
* It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.
** Maimonides, Sefer Hamitzvot [Book of the Commandments], commentary on Negative Commandment 290, as translated by Charles B. Chavel (1967); also in Defending the Human Spirit : Jewish Law's Vision for a Moral Society (2006) by Warren Goldstein, p. 269
* The mere fact that the community demands the murderer's life in return for the evil he has done cannot sustain the death penalty, for as Justice Stewart, Powell, and Stevens remind us, "the Eighth Amendment demands more than that a challenged punishment be acceptable to contemporary society.’To be sustained under the Eighth Amendment, the death penalty must compor[t] with the basic concept of human dignity at the core of the Amendment,’ the objective in imposing it must be [consistent] with our respect for the dignity of [other] men.’ Under these standards, the taking of life "because the wrongdoer deserves it" surely must fall, for such a punishment has as its very basis the total denial of the wrongdoer's dignity and worth. The death penalty, unnecessary to promote the goal of deterrence or to further any legitimate notion of retribution, is an excessive penalty forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. I respectfully dissent from the Court's judgment upholding the sentences of death imposed upon the petitioners in these cases.
** Thurgood Marshall, Dissenting opinion, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976)
* All grandeur, all power, all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association.
** Joseph de Maistre, St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821), "First Dialogue"
* If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.
** George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones, Bran (I)—Lord Eddard Stark, explaining why he personally executes those sentenced to death rather than have a headsman do it.
* Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.
** H. L. Mencken, "The Penalty of Death" (1926)
* ... for if [abrogation] comes it will be their doing, and they will have gained what I cannot but call a fatal victory, for they will have achieved it by bringing about... an effeminacy in the general mind of the country.
** John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism and the 1868 Speech on Capital Punishment, p.68. (Sher, ed. Hackett Publishing Co, 2001)
* This relationship between the citizen and his or her rights does not even make sense in a classical-juridical context. If we consider, for instance, the right to life of the individual in the classical-juridical model, it is the sovereign, and the sovereign alone, who is capable of overriding it. Moreover, should the sovereign choose to violate an individual's right to life, consent has nothing to do with the process. The subject is deprived of the legal protection of full citizenship before his or her life is taken. It is true that many legal systems describe situations in which a citizen's right to life is forfeit-”honor killing” being an obvious example of this process in the nineteenth century French, Italian, and Ottoman criminal code. It is likewise true that the contemporary debate surrounding euthanasia-although arguably more a biopolitical than a political debate-largely has to do with whether or not a citizen can consent to a violation of his or her right to life. But even so, there has been no moment in either of these debates at which the classical juridical sovereign has given up the monopoly on the right to life, or in which the biopolitical sovereign has given up the monopoly on the right to death. There is no question of consent on the part of the citizen- beyond, some might argue, the consent that tied this citizen into an original social contract-because it is the sovereign's right alone to “choose.”
** Miller, Ruth Austin (2007).“The Limits of Bodily Integrity: Abortion, Adultery, and Rape Legislation in Comparative Perspective”. Ashgate Publishing. p.8
* For another interpretation of the movement away from “violent” forms of capital punishment, see: “the sentimentalized body is also intact one might say perfect, the better to sense as a representation of our own empathy and refinement. The humane versions of capital punishment express their humanity in just this: that they leave the body visibly intact, without dismemberment or marks …. '[B]y taking life without marking the body, reformers retain both literal and figurative control over the story told by the execution. Concealing the violence deprives the body of its ability to speak, and thus opens the door to denial.” Hyde 1997, 15. Sarat 2001.
** Miller, Ruth Austin (2007).“The Limits of Bodily Integrity: Abortion, Adultery, and Rape Legislation in Comparative Perspective”. Ashgate Publishing. footnote 107, p.53
* The murder of one person is called unrighteous and incurs one death penalty. Following this argument, the murder of ten persons will be ten times as unrighteous and there should be ten death penalties; the murder of a hundred persons will be a hundred times as unrighteous and there should be a hundred death penalties. All the gentlemen of the world know that they should condemn these things, calling them unrighteous. But when it comes to the great unrighteousness of attacking states, they do not know that they should condemn it. On the contrary, they applaud it, calling it righteous.
** Mozi, Book 5: Condemnation of Offensive War I
* A bedouin came and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Judge between us according to Allah's Laws." His opponent got up and said, "He is right. Judge between us according to Allah's Laws." The Bedouin said, "My son was a laborer working for this man, and he committed illegal sexual intercourse with his wife. The people told me that my son should be stoned to death; so, in lieu of that, I paid a ransom of one hundred sheep and a slave girl to save my son. Then I asked the learned scholars who said, "Your son has to be lashed one-hundred lashes and has to be exiled for one year." The Prophet said, "No doubt I will judge between you according to Allah's Laws. The slave-girl and the sheep are to go back to you, and your son will get a hundred lashes and one year exile." He then addressed somebody, "O Unais! go to the wife of this (man) and stone her to death" So, Unais went and stoned her to death.
** Muhammad narrated Abu Huraira and Zaid bin Khalid Al-Juhani Sahih Bukhari 3:49:860

## N

* Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?
** Holly Near, "Foolish Notion." And Still We Sing: The Outspoken Collection, Calico Tracks Music, 2002.
** Clarifying Note: In the context of the song, the quote is about War.

## O

* Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job.
** George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937.

## P

* The uncanny assemblage of scientific, institutional, legal, and social forces all pushing to strip government of its power to kill make it seem as if there really is a mysterious arc bending toward justice. More prosaically, we are seeing a moral principle—Life is sacred, so killing is onerous—become distributed across a wide range of actors and institutions that have to cooperate to make the death penalty possible. As these actors and institutions implement the principle more consistently and thoroughly, they inexorably push the country away from the impulse to avenge a life with a life. The pathways are manifold and torturous, the effects are slow and then sudden, but in the fullness of time an idea from the Enlightenment can transform the world.
** Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now (Penguin: 2018), p. 21
* Those of us who are for the death penalty are sickened that this man was not killed when first convicted. It sickens us that the family had to live with the daily reality that the torturer and murderer of their son was enjoying his meals, watching TV and sharing the camaraderie of his fellow inmates
** Dennis Prager, Murderers should die, Jewish Journal, March 15, 2011.

## R

* Niles Talbot: First thing you got to understand is when it's their time, all these big tough guys go yellow. Crying, hollering, screaming and blubbering, "The Governor is gonna call," and all that. I been here 12 years, and the Governor ain't called yet.
** Niles Talbot as interpreted by William Sadler in "The Man Who Was Death", Tales from the Crypt, (June 10, 1989), written by Robert Reneau and Walter Hill; based on "The Man Who Was Death" by Gardner Fox in The Crypt of Terror #17, (April/May 1950)
* Niles Talbot: Fucking guys on TV, what do they know? Let me tell you something. If they put executions on TV it would be the fucking highest-rated show of all time. It'd be Neilsens through the roof. The other networks would start killing people just to compete. Pretty soon, Geraldo Rivera would be pulling that switch.
** Niles Talbot as interpreted by William Sadler in "The Man Who Was Death", Tales from the Crypt, (June 10, 1989), written by Robert Reneau and Walter Hill; based on "The Man Who Was Death" by Gardner Fox in The Crypt of Terror #17, (April/May 1950)
* Within your system, to kill is obviously a moral crime, but to kill another in punishment only compounds the original error. Someone very well known who established a church -- if you will, a civilization -- once said, "Turn the other cheek if you are attacked." The original meaning of that remark, however, should be understood. You should turn the other cheek because you realize that basically the attacker only attacks himself. Then you are free, and the reaction is a good one. If you turn the other cheek without this understanding, however, and feel resentful, or if you turn the other cheek out of a feeling of pseudomoral superiority, then the reaction is far from adequate.
** Jane Roberts in Seth Speaks (1972), p. 171
* As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a criminal so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment.
** Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography.
* The Bible identifies 15 crimes against the family worthy of the death penalty. Abortion is treason against the family and deserves the death penalty. Adultery is treason to the family; adulterers should be put to death. Homosexuality is treason to the family and it too, is worthy of death.
** R. J. Rushdoony, to Bill Moyers, on PBS Home Video: God and Politics: On Earth as it is in Heaven, 1988.

## S

* Scroggs, L.C.J: My rule is this, in doubtful cases, when men are upon their lives, I had rather hear what is impertinent, than not let them make a full defence. North, L.C.J: I had rather hear things at a venture, than forbid things at a venture.
** Whitehead's Case (1679), 7 How. St. Tr. 388; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 241.
* In the case of murder, the death penalty - issued by way of putting the culprit to sleep to then apply the lethal injection - is the time delayed procedure of self-defense as carried out by the representatives of the victim(s) who, at the time of the incident and due to the then existing circumstances, was/were unable to defend itself/themselves from the willful murderous attack.
** Manfred F. Schieder (1937 - ) From Chapter 6 of "Ayn Rand, I and the Universe" (http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Schieder/The_Logically_Resulting_Type_of_Society.shtml).
* The Tannam further underscore the distance between the treatment of a fetus and that of a full nefesh in an altogether different circumstance in Mishnah Arakhin: “The execution of a pregnant woman who is condemned to death is not postponed until after she gives birth. But once she is on the birth stool, the execution is postponed until after she gives birth.”
** Daniel Schiff, “Abortion in Judaism”, (Cambridge University Press 2002), Ch.2 Evaluating life: rabbinic perspectives on fetal standing, p.37
* The Tannam elaborate upon their commitment to execution until the onset of labor within a middrashic source: I might have thought that if she were pregnant they would postpone [the execution] until she gave birth. Therefore, the Bible teaches, “He that smote him shall surely be put to death.”” I might have thought that if he were three months pregnant, they should not postpone [the execution] until she gives birth; but if she were nine months pregnant, they should postpone [the execution] until she has given birth. Therefore, Scripture teaches: “he shall surely be put to death.”
** Daniel Schiff, “Abortion in Judaism”, (Cambridge University Press 2002), p.37
* The gemera to Masekhet rakhin conveys a number of important insights that serve to underscore the elevated status of the condemned mother in this case. First, the observation is made that were it not for this mishnah’s explicit demand for her death, the mother would in fact not have been subject to execution, because based on the payment requirement set forth in Exodus 21:22-25, the fetus is the husband’s property “of which he should not be deprived.”” Hence, not only does this mishnah set the condemned woman’s interests over those of her fetus, but over those of her husband, which it is fair to surmise was probably quite a radial notion in the Tannaitic period. Furthermore, in the continuation of the Gemera, the rabbis rule as follows: “Said Rabbi Judah in the name of Samuel: ‘Before such a woman is executed she is struck across her abdomen, so that the fetus will die prior to the execution, to prevent her dishonor at the time of execution.’” Rashi interprets this “”dishonor” to mean that if the fetus did not die, and was expelled from the body after the mother’s execution the bleeding that could result would be a dishonor to the woman. Thus, in addition to the fact that the fate of the fetus was to be given no independent consideration from that of its mother, the law also envisioned that the act of feticide would be carried out separately and deliberately-rather than as a byproduct of the execution – in the interests of the condemned woman’s dignity. At no point in the discussion does the Gemara demur over the proposed feticide. The Tannaitic ruling goes uncontested: the fetus ought to be killed because the interests of the mother in a swift and “dignified” death far outweigh any consideration due to the unborn. Aptowitzer makes the case that the Tannaim were, in this instance, deeply insightful in enacting these provisions, preferring ethics over politics. Politics, it is true, would demand the opposite, for it subordinates the welfare of the individual to the interest of the state; ethics, however, protects the individual in the first place. Politics know subjects of state: taxpayers and soldiers; ethics knows but men. To politics men are members of the state, wheels of a machine; to ethics the state is a union of men. To politics the condemned mother is part of a machine rendered useless, but her expected child is a freshly wrought screw; the former is cast to the heap of old iron, the latter is guarded carefully. To ethics, however, the condemned mother is still a woman having claim to forbearance. Hence the politically motivated laws of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, refused to admit the execution of a pregnant woman; while the ethically motivated law of the Jews prescribes it.
** Daniel Schiff, “Abortion in Judaism”, (Cambridge University Press 2002), p.39
* Waltke notes that Lev. 24:17 requires the death penalty for anyone who “kills any human life,” and says that the death penalty plainly was not prescribed in Exodus, Chapter 21, for killing a fetus. He concludes that the fetus was not reckoned as a soul in the Old Testament. W.A. Criswell agrees with Waltke, focusing as he does on the “birth and breath” criteria for personhood of Gen. 2:7. He says that the legislation in Exodus was “designed to protect pregnant women from injury” and clearly recognized the different standings of women and fetuses under the law.
** Paul D. Simmons, “Personhood, the Bible, and the Abortion Debate”, p.3

## T

* I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that that death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.
** Margaret Thatcher
* No man e'er felt the halter draw, With good opinion of the law.
** John Trumbull, McFingal, Canto iii (1782), line 489.

## U

* The most marked indication of society's endorsement of the death penalty for murder is the legislative response to Furman.
** U.S. Supreme Court, Gregg v. Georgia, 2 July 1976 (affirming the resumption of capital punishment in the United States).
* But we are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes.
** U.S. Supreme Court, Gregg v. Georgia, 2 July 1976 (affirming the resumption of capital punishment in the United States).
* After a four-year moratorium on executions in California, multiple proceedings in federal court, a state administrative law proceeding, and state court appeals, it is incredible to think that the deliberative process might be driven by the expiration date of the execution drug.
** U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Morales and Brown v. Cate, 27 September 2010 (delaying the resumption of capital punishment in California).

## V

* Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.
** Voltaire, "Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws," Dictionnaire philosophique (1785-1789)

## W

* Society should not be the Angel of Death. We should not be servants of death. The law should celebrate, glorify, sanctify life, always life.
** Elie Wiesel, Is Society the Angel of Death? Elie Wiesel's Take, Moment Magazine, November 3, 2010

## Dialogue

* Henry Ducard: You are ready to become a member of the League of Shadows. But first, you must demonstrate your commitment to justice.
    Bruce Wayne: No. I'm no executioner.
    Henry Ducard: Your compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share.
    Bruce Wayne: That's why it's so important. It separates us from them.
   * Ra's al Ghul/Henry Ducard as interpreted by Liam Neeson and Bruce Wayne as interpreted by Christian Bale in Batman Begins, (2005); written by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer

## See also

* Homicide
* Law
* Prison

## External links

* Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Famous Quotes about Death Penalty and Capital Punishment
* Anti-Death Penalty Quotes - compilation of abolitionist quotes