Against Death Penalty Quotes

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

Ajamu Baraka is a human rights advocate and an international human rights advocate, who's been defending racial justice, economic justice, worker justice, indigenous justice, and justice for black and brown people all over the world, and in the United States has been helping to lead the charge against the death penalty here, and is an extremely eloquent and empowering person. And one of the great things about running with him is that we speak to all of America.

My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty.

When you poll snake person Christians, Christians born after 1980, it's like 80% of them are against the death penalty. It's not because they've thrown out their faith, but it's because of their faith they can't reconcile the death penalty with Jesus and their commitment to Jesus.

For me the hardest struggle in my faith life was the Catholic Church is against the death penalty.

We as the Church need to express wherever appropriate and wherever possible our stance against the death penalty. We need to talk about it. A lot of people don't feel comfortable in doing this but I think we need to, as the Pope says, preach the whole gospel of life.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

I had concluded when I was the prosecutor that I would vote against the death penalty if I were in the legislature but that I could ask for it when I was satisfied as to guilt.

I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished.

It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can't leave behind something as primitive as government-sponsored execution.

The campaign against the death penalty has been - while a powerful campaign, its participants have been those who attend all of the vigils, a relatively small number of people.

Now I am dedicating that life to campaigning against the death penalty and raising awareness about human rights.

Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.

Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons.

I can't talk politics with my cousin because he's such a hypocrite. He's against the death penalty and he hanged himself.

I am against the death penalty.

From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

To top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole.

I am pleased that I am able to stand here today and say with a pure heart and meaningful heart that I am against the death penalty. There is no purpose that it serves except to further the damage that death has already done.

People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.

Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.

Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.

I support the death penalty. But I also think there has to be no margin for error.

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.

I'm not in favor of the death penalty. But I'm in favor of locking these people away in maximum security units where they can never get out. They can never escape. They can never be paroled. Lock the bad ones away. But you gotta rethink everybody else.

I have yet to see a death case among the dozen coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial... People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.

My overriding belief is that it is always possible for criminals to improve and that by its very finality the death penalty contradicts this.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.

Government ... can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.

With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don't think it's human to become an agent of the angel of death.

The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography and local politics.

Since I was a law student, I have been against the death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against minorities, especially since they're given no competent legal counsel defense in many cases. It's a system that has to be perfect. You cannot execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed in retaliation.

Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.

Justice is never advanced in the taking of human life.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

I think, when the African-American community understands my record on criminal justice, my record on economics, the agenda we're bringing forth, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, dealing with the fact that we have more people in jail, shamefully, than any other country on Earth, that I am against the death penalty, Secretary Clinton is not, I think, as people become familiar with my ideas, we are going to do better and better.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Can the state, which represents the whole of society and has the duty of protecting society, fulfill that duty by lowering itself to the level of the murderer, and treating him as he treated others? The forfeiture of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process.

If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by our friends the murderers.

Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty... mine's putting in an express lane.