Game of Thrones 2019 - T E Lawrence - Voltaire - Beyond a Reasonable Doubt 1956 - Ronald Hampton - Star Trek: Voyager TV - Monty Python’s Life of Brian 1979 - George W Bush - Elizabeth Fry - Alphonse Karr - Death Penalty Information Centre online - Agnes Heller - Justice Thurgood Marshall - Justice William J Brennan - Penn & Teller TV - Paul Foot - Sean Penn - Agnes Heller - Marquis de LaFayette - C D Hare - Alan Gell - Eliot Spitzer - Albert Camus - Steve Earle - John Grisham - Noam Chomsky - Gerald Heaney - Anton Chekhov - Horizon TV - Werner Herzog TV - Henry Root - Steven J Levitt & Stephen J Dubner - Henry A Blackman - Storyville: A Death Row Tale TV - 14 Days in May TV - Life and Death Row TV - Timeshift: Crime & Punishment: The Story of Capital Punishment TV - Angela Davis - The Strange Case of the Law TV -
Lord Varys, I Daenerys of House Targaryen, First of my Name, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragon, sentence you to die. Game of Thrones s8e5: The Bells, Sky Atlantic 2019
In the name of the one true queen Daenerys Targaryen I sentence you to die. Game of Thrones s8e6: The Iron Throne, Grey Worm with prisoners to Jon Snow
Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper to escape the life-sentence which fate carries in her own hand. T E Lawrence, The Mint, 1955
The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing. Voltaire
I just don’t think the State should take a man’s life. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt 1956 starring Joan Fontaine & Dana Andrews & Sidney Blackmer & Shepperd Strudwick & Arthur Franz & Philip Bourneuf & Ed Binns & Robin Raymond, director Fritz Lang, Austin
I believe that there is a racist component to the death penalty. Ronald Hampton, executive director US National Black Police Association
Our society like any other must control its disruptive elements. And execution may be undesirable – I grant you that – but on some rare occasions it is necessary and wise. Star Trek: Voyager s2e18: Death Wish, Q’s asylum hearing
Let’s go to the stoning. Monty Python’s Life of Brian 1979 ***** starring Graham Chapman & John Cleese & Terry Gilliam & Eric Idle & Terry Jones & Michael Palin & Kenneth Colley & Neil Innes & Gwen Taylor & Terence Barler & Carol Cleveland & Spike Milligan et al, director Terry Jones, Mother of Brian to Brian
Feel the quality of that ... Should be a good one this afternoon. Local boy. Enjoy yourselves. ibid. stone-seller
I understand the emotionality of the death penalty. George W Bush
The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that I’ve looked at. I do not believe we’ve put a guilty ... I mean innocent person to death in the state of Texas. George W Bush
Does capital punishment tend to the security of the people? By no means. It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life seem light to them. Elizabeth Fry
In that case, if we are to abolish the death penalty, let the murderers take the first step. Alphonse Karr, French novelist & journalist
Two Cases Added to DPIC’s Innocence List Bringing Total to 121. Death Penalty Information Centre website article 15th August 2005
If you support the death penalty and only one single innocent person is killed, and killing an innocent person is murder, then you become murderers. So, you also deserve to be killed. This is the paradox of the death penalty, and you cannot avoid this paradox. Professor Agnes Heller
When in Gregg v Georgia the Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to capital punishment, this endorsement was premised on the promise that capital punishment would be administered with fairness and justice. Instead, the promise has become a cruel and empty mockery. If not remedied, the scandalous state of our present system of capital punishment will cast a pall of shame over our society for years to come. We cannot let it continue. Justice Thurgood Marshall, 1990
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. Justice William J Brennan junior, 1994
Is it ever morally right to kill a human being? ... Is it OK to kill someone if you’re not at war or not being immediately threatened by them? ... Do you trust the government to kill only bad people? ... The death penalty is bullshit! Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s4e3: The Death Penalty, Showtime 2006
64% of Americans support the death penalty. ibid.
Are you really willing to trust the government workers to end someone’s life? What is the government good at? ibid.
A study published in the medical journal The Lancet examined data from autopsies performed on forty-nine executions ... Forty-three of the executions had lower concentrations ... were likely to have been awake and aware ... Fails to meet the standards of putting down animals. ibid.
Murder Rate 1999: Death Penalty States 5.5; Non-Death Penalty States 3.6. ibid.
Murder Rate 2004: Death Penalty States 5.1; Non-Death Penalty States 2.9. ibid.
Death Row: 46% are White; 42% are Black. But Blacks only make up 12% of the population. ibid.
We’re all murderers. ibid.
Deterrent? Jesus Christ! ibid.
As we contemplate the horrors of Death Row we’re inclined to write off capital punishment as a peculiarly American barbarism, a throwback to the distant reactionary past, unthinkable in civilised social democratic Britain. In fact, between 1900 and 1949 some 632 people were murdered by the British state because they had allegedly committed murder. Paul Foot, article October 1995, ‘State of Terror’
The more the argument for capital punishment depended on a rational case for deterrence, the more it was lost. The Royal Commission found no conclusive evidence of deterrence. Especially impressive were the statistics from the United States where capital punishment had been abolished in some states, not in others. In North Dakota, for instance, where capital punishment was abolished in 1915, the murder rate was slightly lower than in South Dakota where the social composition was very similar and where capital punishment was still in force. In Maine capital punishment had been abolished in 1876 and reintroduced after a right wing hullabaloo following an especially nasty murder. The murder rate, however, went up even faster, so capital punishment was abolished again in 1887 – after which the rate subsided.
The truth was that there was no correlation at all between the incidence of capital punishment and the incidence of murder. Murders were mainly personal or domestic crimes, immune from deterrence. Moreover, there were plenty of American ‘mistakes’ similar to the tragedies of Timothy Evans and James Hanratty. Capital punishment did not deter murders, and if a ‘mistake’ was made, there was no way of putting it right. ibid.
In the 1950s and 1960s the possibility of such a mistake was widely dismissed in polite society. Lord Chancellor Lord Kilmuir, discussing the Evans case, told parliament that the idea that a judge, jury and the court of appeal could convict the wrong person was ‘in the realms of fantasy’. Those realms of fantasy have been visited again and again in recent years as an enormous stream of prisoners wrongly convicted for murder have emerged from the high court after years of wholly unjustified, and not at all fantastical, imprisonment. ibid.
It matters not an iota that killing murderers does nothing to stop killing or murder, or that the people being executed may not be murderers at all. What matters is the immediate satisfaction of blood lust. The feeling that something is being done is far better than the reality of doing something, especially when doing something means dismantling the inequalities on which class society depends. It follows that the politicians and businessmen who clamour for these state murders are far, far more guilty of violence and social chaos than any of the victims of their society whom they want to murder. ibid.
If the eye for an eye is the best that we can offer victims of violent crime then we’re their biggest opposition. Sean Penn, San Quentin protest to save Tookie Williams
It is our moral integrity which calls for the abolition of the death penalty. In the 21st century the death penalty takes away a part of our humanity. It is an immoral issue for us in this century. Professor Agnes Heller, Holocaust survivor
I will believe in the death penalty when you will prove to me the infallibility of human beings. Marquis de LaFayette
Capital Punishment is a good way of making miscarriages of justice irrevocable while reducing murder rates not at all. C D Hare
We’re sending innocent people to prison. We’re sending people to Death Row. I was on Death Row for a little over five years. Alan Gell
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. Eliot Spitzer