Death penalty quotes

o    Revenge is my birthright ­­– Anon

OK, I tried to pull a fast one, but could not get through your defenses.

Following are the legitimate quotes, sourced widely; and, democratically too, in the sense that who said them did not matter. For some of them I intend to mention how I interpreted it. There may be some surprises, these interpretations coming from me!

I may have mentioned some of them, after all, all these are from my personal book of quotes and I have released a few at a time, a few times. But, please do not criticize me too much on this score.

o    Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind – G B Shaw

o    …and so to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honour and peace, until the Gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand - Shakespeare

Now, that is two litterateurs coming together! While I admit to not being all that aware of literature, I am surprised that I have hardly seen these quotes being mentioned by people who support death penalty. Does a good discussion not include the opposition’s point of view?

Another one from the world of literature

o    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 judgment — J.R.R. Tolkien

No comments.

o    I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice - Abraham Lincoln

o    No beast is more savage than man, when possessed with power answerable to rage – Cicero

OK, the statements are not explicit about death penalty. But, can anyone deny that it is relevant to death penalty?

o    People try non-violence for a week, and when it `doesn’t work,’ they go back to violence which hasn’t worked for centuries – Theodore Roszak

This works for violence – death penalty – as much as it does for discrimination, particularly when it is centuries old and heredity-based.

o    Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to the more ought law to weed it out’ – Francis Bacon

The above, in a sense, goes against democracy of the majoritarian kind and runs along the constitutional conception. There comes a time, majoritarian democracy must be stood on its head, and people have to be shown that their collective thinking – particularly with respect to seeking revenge – is leading them to damnation.  This is what most nations who have abolished death penalty have done, against the wishes of their constituents. But, it is OK because democracy may not always lead to the right outcomes (I know I am being judgmental here).

o    …you cannot fight for life and be the enemy of life at the same time – Albie Sachs

The interesting thing about this statement is it is by a judge (now retired) of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and he mentioned this in the context of the arguments for discarding death penalty from the country’s constitution as it was being written in the 1990s.

o    [I]t’s a less evil that some criminals should escape than that the Government should play an ignoble part – Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

It is appropriate to cite a US Supreme Court Judge soon after quoting Albie Sachs. The latter knew all about the government, of the apartheid regime, playing an ignoble part.

Another call for abolishing death penalty from another judge of the US Supreme Court, in a case that decided against death penalty, Furman v. Georgia

o    The penalty of death differs from all other forms of criminal punishment, not in degree, but in kind. It is unique in its total irrevocability. It is unique in its rejection of rehabilitation of the convict as a basic purpose of criminal justice. And it is unique, finally, in its absolute renunciation of all that is embodied in our concept of humanity - Justice Potter Stewart

o    …the death penalty, rather than preventing violence, only perpetuates it and inflicts further pain on survivors – Relatives of murder victims (76 in number, in the US state of Connecticut)

You may note that the pain on the survivors is enlarged, as admitted by them.

o    Death penalty should be done away with, as death cannot be a penalty – Jayakanthan (paraphrased)

Even without being a relative of a murder victim (as far as I know), Jayakanthan, a Tamil writer, seems to echo the Connecticut families of victims, only shifting the perspective.

OK, now that is a set of a dozen quotes from a variety of people, professionals. Now, what I would request is for my readers to help me balance my book of quotes by letting me know quotes extolling death penalty.

I would be much obliged.

Raghuram Ekambaram