quotations about capital punishment
I know something about killing. I don't like killing. And I don't think a state honors life by turning around and sanctioning killing. Now, that's just a personal belief that I have.
JOHN KERRY
Wolf Blitzer Reports, Sep. 17, 1996
When a juvenile commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.
ANTHONY KENNEDY
judicial opinion, Roper v. Simmons, Mar. 1, 2005
Lynch the first, slaughter the last
Exterminate the absolute
Stain the just in the blood bath
Waste the pure, butcher the divine
Annihilate the sunrise
P.O.D. & SICK JACKEN
"Murdered Love"
I have become both intellectually engaged in the questions surrounding the death penalty and personally unsettled by the continued insistence in more than half the states in our nation that this is a reasonable punishment, even as nearly every other country we consider peers have eliminated it. And many of those countries whose values we consider inimical to ours--North Korea, Iran, Iraq--continue it.
NATHALIE BAPTISTE
"The Cruel Durability of Capital Punishment", Mother Jones, July 3, 2019
Death is a penalty
To one who would kill
My past is catching up with me
Got a coffin to fill
THE ELDERBERRIES
"Running for Life", Nothing Ventured Nothing Gained
It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.
MAIMONIDES
Sefer Hamitzvot
Here there's a back water remedy
Bitter intent to memory
A class E felony
Facing the death penalty
MOS DEF
"Hip Hop", Black on Both Sides