#penal

I had concluded when I was the prosecutor that I would vote against the death penalty if I were in the legislature but that I could ask for it when I was satisfied as to guilt. ↗

— Janet Reno

#ask #concluded #could #death #death penalty

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. ↗

— George Ryan

#because #capricious #death #death penalty #i

Sometimes I have to compromise my views, but I never compromise on issues like the death penalty and the arm trade laws, despite what the readers or letters may say. ↗

— Jonathan Shapiro

#compromise #death #death penalty #despite #i

I am of opinion that it is highly requisite forthwith to pass a law, prohibiting upon great penalties all trade with our enemies, and more especially the supplying of them with arms, ammunition or provisions of any kind whatsoever. ↗

— William Shirley

#ammunition #any #arms #especially #great

I'd rather play with 10 people and just get penalized all the way until we have to do something else rather than play with 11 when I know that right now that person is not sold out to be a part of this team. ↗

— Mike Singletary

#get #i #just #know #now

People who change their religion should face the death penalty. ↗

— Zakir Naik

#bigotry #death-penalty #fanaticism #islam #religion

It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad. ↗

— Frederick Forsyth

#execution #first-line #first-lines #first-sentence #frederick-forsyth

When a man is penalized for honesty he learns to lie. ↗

— Criss Jami

#honesty #human-nature #lying #man #penalize

The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be inflicted for murder and perhaps for treason, [but I] would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature. Rape, buggery, etc., punish by castration. All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies, etc., a certain time proportioned to the offence... Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally and impartially to every description of men; those of the judge or of the executive power will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#public-good #security #virtue #death

History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong. ↗

— John Acton

#history #neither #nor #penalties #provides