Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons.
First of all, it does not deter crime, the death penalty.
I think life is sacred, whether it's abortion or the death penalty.
You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty.
People always kill Caesar. Don't trust anyone.
Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
When I arrived in France aged 20, I marched against the death penalty, which was an unpopular thing to protest against at the time.
I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.
[Mozart loses at musical chairs] Emanuel Schikaneder: Herr Mozart, why don't you name your son's penalty? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Yes, Papa. Name it. Name it, I'll do anything you say. Anything. Leopold Mozart: I want you to come back to Salzburg wi...
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers.
I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us.
I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.
My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.
People who change their religion should face the death penalty.
It's people with obsessions who do the real harm in the world.
If the penalty for hiring illegals is just a fine, it becomes a business decision. But if the penalty is jail time, illegal immigration will come to a screeching halt.
Almost all the early Christian Fathers were opposed to the death penalty, even though it was of course standard practice across the ancient world.
I believe that more people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.
To exclude all jurors who would be in the slightest way affected by the prospect of the death penalty would be to deprive the defendant of the impartial jury to which he or she is entitled under the law.
I don't want to put one innocent person to death to put 99 that are guilty to death. So philosophically I'm a tooth-for-tooth guy, but the reality is the death penalty as public policy is flawed.
