Zitat des Tages über Todesstrafe / Capital Punishment:
I contend that it's impossible to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out against capital punishment.
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
Everybody believes that capital punishment is wrong, but when they look at certain cases, they're quick to say, 'Put them to death,' or scream 'capital punishment.'
As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.
I think capital punishment works great. Every killer you kill never kills again.
Crimes against children are the most heinous crime. That, for me, would be a reason for capital punishment because children are innocent and need the guidance of an adult society.
Suicide is possible, but not probable; hanging, I trust, is even more unlikely; for I hope that, by the time I die, my countrymen will have become civilised enough to abolish capital punishment.
The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder.
But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.
I support capital punishment. But let's be clear: It's a decision for each state to make.
If the executioner goes, my package will never be made public. If he doesn't go, it will be made public exactly fifty years from the day the bill for a moratorium on capital punishment is defeated.
This country is becoming increasingly authoritarian. It's based on capital punishment.
I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counterespionage and the law, and then prosecution and capital punishment.
And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, - at least in theory.
As an American I wanted to explore... why are we the only first world country that still has capital punishment? Is it because we're too afraid to really examine the system, or is it because we really truly believe that this is the best way to deter future crime?
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
I would like to see capital punishment suppressed in all democracies.
What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party.
Countries and states which have capital punishment have a much higher rate of murder and crime than countries that do not, so that makes sense to me, and the moral question - I struggle with it morally.
I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified.
If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.
I'm very much interested in getting prisons off the stock market. I'm very much interested in upgrading the public school system... and taking a second look at capital punishment.
One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts... to my surprise... almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.