We must inaugurate the Age of Enlightenment and invincibility of society against crime pathology by creating the integrated man. All else, including death penalty, is criminological quackery and jurisprudential philistinism. Law must outlaw the delusive drug of the condemned cell. Our undertaking must be geared to this goal. Our penal code provides for capital punishment for wide range of offence. But sadly, the death penalty has never reduced these crimes in the country.
-- Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, Judge of the Supreme Court of India.
Death penalty is irrevocable; it cannot be recalled. It is destructive of the right to life. Howsoever careful may be the procedural safeguards erected by the law before the penalty is imposed. It is impossible to eliminate the chance of judicial error. One innocent man being hanged should be enough to wipe out the value of capital punishment for ever.
-- P. N. Bhagwati, former Chief Justice of India.
I was eight years old when my father was murdered. But even as a child one thing was clear to me: I didn't want the killer, in turn, to be killed. I can remember lying in bed and praying, 'Please, God. Please don’t let them kill him.' I saw nothing that could be accomplished in the loss of one life being answered with the loss of another. And I knew, far too vividly, the anguish that would spread through another family-another set of parents, children, brothers, and sisters thrown into grief.
-- Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy.
There is no way of constructing a system that will not execute the innocent. The death penalty does not make us safer. That is a lie.
-- Michael O'Connor, Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, The Saint Cloud Visitor, 3/4/2004.
People are willing to concede that it [the death penalty] is just pure revenge and they’re willing to live with that.
-- Hunter Labovitz, Tallahassee attorney.
Even if there's just one person on death row that's innocent, just one that should be enough to take a look at the system ... It's on everybody's hands if we execute somebody who's innocent. The system didn't free me. God did. God manifested the truth.
-- Darryl Eugene Hunt, twice convicted of a 1984 murder and sentenced to life, exonerated in February 2004 when another man confessed to the murder, (1) The Courier-Tribune, 4/27/2004, (2) NBC17 News, 5/12/2004.
Who tries to ease the pain for the parents of the condemned? Who tells us that they are sorry and remorseful for the death of our child? Does the state consider us, the parents, siblings and family of the condemned, as victims? No, they do not. But as surely as I live and breathe, we are the victims who have all the grief and none of the closure.
-- Lyndia Faihtinger, mother of death row inmate Norman R. Clary, letter to the editor, Houston Press, 10/18/2002.
War, capital punishment, the taking of human life, cruelty of all kinds whether committed by the individual, the State or society, not only physical cruelty, but moral cruelty, the degradation of any human being or any class of human beings under whatever specious plea or in whatever interest, ... are crimes against the religion of humanity, abominable to its ethical mind, forbidden by its primary tenets, to be fought against always, in no degree to be tolerated.
-- Sri Aurobindo, Indian politician, philosopher (1872-1950).
A great deal of controversy has attended the question of abolition of the death penalty. Arguments both in favour and against can never settle the question. To my mind, it is ultimately a question of respect for life and human approach to those who commit grievous hurts to others. Death sentence is no remedy for such crimes. A more humane and constructive remedy is to remove the culprit concerned from the normal milieu and treat him as a mental case. I am sure a large proportion of the murderers could be weaned away from their path and their mental condition sufficiently improved to become useful citizens. In a minority of cases, this may not be possible. They may be kept in prison houses till they die a natural death. This may cause a heavier economic burden on society than hanging. But I have no doubt that a humane treatment even of a murderer will enhance man's dignity and make society more human.
- Jaya Prakash Narayan (1902-2002), Indian political leader and theorist.
Must we kill to prevent there being any wicked? This is to make both parties wicked instead of one.
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French mathematician.
[F]or a doctor to use the tools and expertise they use to treat patients to kill people is a perversion of medical practice. There are people who do such horrendous things, the most horrific, deadly crimes that I don't think they deserve to live. But that's different from saying, 'Well, let's kill them.'
-- Dr. Arthur Zitrin, former director of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital and chairman of the Dean's Committee on Medical Ethics at New York University, about the participation of doctors in executions, New York Daily News, 5/10/2004.
The application of the death penalty mostly closely resembles the lottery.
-- Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, Manhattan, NY; (3) AP, 12/15/2004; (4) Column, Sheryl McCarthy, Newsday, Inc., 12/16/2004.
My primary concern is not compassion for the murderer. My concern is for the society which adopts vengeance as an acceptable motive for its collective behaviour. If we make that choice, we will snuff out some of that boundless hope and confidence in ourselves and other people, which has marked our maturing as free people.
--Pierre Elliott Trudeau, former Prime Minister of Canada.
To repay brutality with brutality, in any manner does not serve any useful purpose.
--President Sir Dawda Jawara, Gambia.
The fruit of my experience has this bitter after-taste: that I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.
-- Albert Pierrepoint, former executioner, UK
