94 Pro Death Penalty Quotes by Journalists from the U.S.A

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.

Execution in America is far from common --like the Chinese who find execution a simple method to rid themselves of a drugs problem, or Mr. Ahmadinejad who claims his country has "no gays"-- it is used only for the most heinous crimes. It is not barbaric; nor is there need for all the barbaric torture associated with the likes of Guy Fawkes and his gang; because it is not about vengeance or retribution but it serves a simple purpose. It balances the scales of justice and in the process shows to what extent a society really values the lives of its citizenry. [Troy Davis - Justice Served Posted: 22 September 2011 2:08 PM in the Daily Mail]

The United Kingdom doesn’t have a death penalty and in cases like the Soham Murders, the Moors, Bulger, Fred West – ones so shocking that even execution is considered a proportional and measured response – this is a shame. The abolition of a death penalty here is not the sign of some form of modern day enlightenment but in fact just the opposite. If anything it is a sign of moral weakness, of a society that is so afraid of its own barbarity that it cannot grasp the difference or distinguish between justice and revenge. Instead like a deer frozen in the headlights of the sometimes scary demands of justice it does nothing; a community so scared to act in case it gets the justice confused with revenge will let both perpetrators and victims (mainly their families) suffer for a lifetime instead. Ultimately it is the sign of a society that will not take on the duty to protect its citizens or stand up to the responsibilities and demands of justice. Justice is more than a set of laws; it is the ability to fairly adjudge crimes, set fitting penalties, and then have the courage to carry out that which justice demands. If the penalty falls far short of the crime then eventually the crime itself is trivialized and so are the rest of us. [Troy Davis - Justice Served Posted: 22 September 2011 2:08 PM in the Daily Mail]

The deterrent effects of the death penalty in the United States are incontrovertible. One only has to look at studies and statistics concerning murderers who have been let out only to kill again to realize that the death penalty does work as a deterrent – if not for others, at least for the killer in question. It can also be argued that some crimes, so repugnant and horrific that the death penalty is the only morally appropriate response, particularly to satisfy the families of the victims and to protect the wider community. [Troy Davis - Justice Served Posted: 22 September 2011 2:08 PM in the Daily Mail]

Capital punishment is punishment for grown up societies -- not cowering in the face of the mass injustice of murder. [Troy Davis - Justice Served Posted: 22 September 2011 2:08 PM in the Daily Mail]

The war on terror is fought on many fronts. The killing of people like Awlaki with Hellfire missiles is one of them; so are the years of meticulous intelligence gathering and research that led to his assassination. The fact is that we also need to win the battle of ideas. That means the public need to understand the differences between the laws of war from criminal and civil law; why the laws of war apply here. It takes an understanding and acknowledgement of the real threats we are up against and the freedoms we are fighting for. That the ideology promulgated by the likes of Awlaki is illiberal, fascist and a threat to the cause of freedom. There are no moral relativisms here. Our failure to understand the threat against us will lead to our losing not just the battle of ideas but the battle itself. [“Of Course it was Right to Kill Awlaki – Why Would You Even Ask.” Posted: Friday 30 September 2011 8:42 PM in the Daily Mail]

The death penalty debate is back in full swing. The public's desire is no mystery. We want fewer debates and more executions. Every poll on the topic finds huge majorities in favor of executing first-degree murderers.

With 20,000 murders a year in the United States, most of us grasp instinctively what happens when the legal system fails to punish murder with a sentence that fits the awfulness and severity of the crime. That willful murderers should be put to death is a moral principle running straight back to Genesis. ("Whoso sheddeth the blood of man," God commands Noah, "by man shall his blood be shed.") [“Without the death penalty, innocents will die” by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe June 21, 1994]

There are many phony arguments against capital punishment, usually offered by death penalty opponents who would remain death penalty opponents even if their objections were met.

They claim to be against capital punishment because, they say, it has no deterrent effect. Or because other Western democracies have abolished it. Or because it is applied -- so they claim -- with a racist double standard. Or because rich killers hire top-notch lawyers and get off. Or because death by electrocution (or hanging, or even injection) is too gruesome. Or because the legal process is too expensive. Or because capital punishment is simply murder committed by the state. [“Without the death penalty, innocents will die” by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe June 21, 1994]

Phony, the lot. Each is either untrue (more white murderers are executed, for example, than black murderers); irrelevant (when did France become our role model?); or illogical (if capital punishment is state murder, a prison sentence must be state kidnapping). In most cases, these arguments are only rationalizations used to justify an opinion that won't change regardless of the facts.

This is easy to test. Ask the death penalty foe of your choice: If Belgium, Spain and Denmark reimposed capital punishment, would you favor it? If it were proven that executing murderers deterred potential killers? If the death penalty were administered with perfect color- and income-blindness? If all legal costs were paid privately? Then would you support it?

The answer is never yes. [“Without the death penalty, innocents will die” by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe June 21, 1994]

In other words, if the death penalty is revived, an innocent man might be killed.

That is true, and the point has some force. But if the death penalty is not revived, even more innocent people will be killed. The risk to innocent life is greater without capital punishment than with it. The only moral choice, therefore, is to favor its reimposition. [“Without the death penalty, innocents will die” by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe June 21, 1994]

Execute killers and they can never hurt another soul. Let them live and some number of them will kill again. It is easy to talk about locking murderers up for life. Even if that were possible, some would escape and kill again. Some would kill prison guards. Some would kill other inmates. [“Without the death penalty, innocents will die” by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe June 21, 1994]

The death penalty is the only just response to murder. With capital punishment, society faces the tiny possibility that an innocent life may be taken. Without capital punishment, society faces the certainty that more innocent lives will be taken. For anyone of sound mind and conscience, the choice should be clear. [“Without the death penalty, innocents will die” by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe June 21, 1994]

It is up to the law to speak to them-to speak for all grief-stricken survivors confronted with the butchery of someone near and dear. Capital punishment says to them: We, the community, take your loss with the utmost seriousness. We know that you are filled with rage and pain. We know that you may cry for vengeance, may yearn to strangle the murderer with your bare hands. You are right to feel that way. But it is not for you to wreak retribution. As a decent and just society, we will do it. Fairly. After due process. In a court of law.

"The Abolitionist's Cop-Out". The Boston Globe. 8 June 2000 - On the contrary. The growing infallibility of forensic science should if anything increase, not lessen, our confidence in the accuracy of criminal verdicts. And if that is true of convictions in general, it is especially true in death penalty cases, which are subject to multiple levels of post-trial review and intricate layers of due process. Of all the sanctions in our criminal code, a death sentence is the *least* likely to be the result of error or caprice.

"The Abolitionist's Cop-Out". The Boston Globe. 8 June 2000 - Nevertheless, let us suppose the worst. For the sake of argument, let us assume that the death penalty -- despite all our best efforts, despite all the safeguards and caution built into the system -- leads to the deaths of a few innocent people. Is that a good reason to do away with capital punishment?

Of course it isn't. Every institution that is of benefit to society also poses risks to society -- including the risk that innocent victims will die.

Patients die on the operating table because their surgeon made a mistake. Forty thousand Americans die in car accidents every year. Are those good reasons to abolish surgery and interstate highways? Anyone who said so would be dismissed as a crank.

Should policemen be allowed to carry guns? After all, if law enforcement officers go armed, innocent victims will sometimes lose their lives, as the recent deaths of Amadou Diallo in New York and Cornel Young in Providence, R.I., so tragically prove. If death penalty abolitionists really want to make sure that no one is unjustly killed by an agent of the state, they ought to call for disarming cops.

But is that what they really want? Is it the threat to innocent life that truly galvanizes the abolitionists, or is it simply their visceral dislike for capital punishment?

"The Abolitionist's Cop-Out". The Boston Globe. 8 June 2000 - No one who genuinely worries about the legal system putting innocent people at risk can afford to waste time denouncing the death penalty. In one 17-month period, criminals released "under supervision" committed 13,200 murders. Why is it that the enemies of capital punishment never have a word to say about those innocent victims?

"The Abolitionist's Cop-Out". The Boston Globe. 8 June 2000 - To say that society should refrain from executing murderers for fear of making a mistake is not noble. It is a cop-out. A soldier on the battlefield who refuses to shoot at the enemy lest he inadvertently hit the wrong man is no moral hero, and neither are those who demand that all murderers be kept alive so that we never face a risk -- however tiny, however remote -- of executing an innocent defendant.

"The Abolitionist's Cop-Out". The Boston Globe. 8 June 2000 - Granted, it is not easy to condemn someone to death, still less to carry out the sentence. Executions are irrevocable and irreversible; to take away anyone's life -- even a brutal criminal's -- involves an assertion of moral certainty that might make many of us tremble.

But trembling or not, we have a duty to carry out. A duty to proclaim that murder is evil and will not be tolerated. That it is the worst of all crimes and deserves the worst of all punishments. And that while we will bend over backward not to hurt the innocent, we will not let that paralyze us from punishing the guilty.

With McVeigh's death, wrote Rob Ham of California, "What has changed? The victims are still dead. Do the families now have closure? Can anyone ever have closure after losing a child, a husband, a wife, or a parent?"

This is an appeal to emotion, not reason. Of course the victims are still dead. They would still be dead if McVeigh had gotten life in prison, too. Or 20 years. Or probation. No one thinks the purpose of punishment is to undo the crime, yet death penalty abolitionists routinely remind us that killing a murderer won't bring his victims back to life. If that is a reason to ban executions, it is a reason to ban all punishment. [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist. "The feeble 'arguments' against capital punishment". Jewish World Review. 19 June 2001]

Ham's "closure" argument, meanwhile, is simply uninformed. The families of murder victims do not stop mourning when the killer dies, but for many, there is indeed a measure of solace in knowing that the monster who destroyed their loved one will never hurt anyone again. Abolishing executions certainly won't bring "closure" to grieving relatives. On the contrary, it will deepen their torment, mocking them each time they remember that the person they loved is in the grave, while his killer continues to breathe. [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist. "The feeble 'arguments' against capital punishment". Jewish World Review. 19 June 2001]

Why is it barbaric to require that one who violently steals the life of an innocent (or 168 innocents) not be allowed to keep his own? Where is the moral tradition that prescribes life for mass-murderers? How can it be civilizing to tell the world's worst people that no matter no matter how many victims they butcher, no matter what cruelty they inflict on others, the worst that will happen to them is that they will go to prison? Those are questions that abolitionists never answer. [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist. "The feeble 'arguments' against capital punishment". Jewish World Review. 19 June 2001]

‘The loss of freedom for the remainder of one's life is no mild punishment,' James Bernstein of New York wrote to the Times. 'We do not need the death penalty to express society's utter repudation of those who would take the lives of others.'

Bernstein has it exactly wrong. A society that bans the death penalty outright is confirming that it does not utterly repudiate its worst murderers. The United States last week made clear just how seriously it regards McVeigh's monstrous crime. Change the law so that no future McVeigh can be put to death, and the United States will be sending a different message: Mass murder isn't that bad. [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist. "The feeble 'arguments' against capital punishment". Jewish World Review. 19 June 2001]

In his view, executions are nothing but organized savagery:

"The execution of Timothy McVeigh will not bring back Julie or her colleagues," Welch says, "nor will it end the grieving for any of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. Revenge and hate are the reasons 168 people died that day in 1995. I oppose the death penalty absolutely, in all cases, because in all cases it is an act of revenge and hatred.

Bud Welch is wrong to describe capital punishment as nothing but "revenge and hatred" and wrong to imply that revenge and hatred -- as opposed to fairness and justice -- are what drive those who disagree with him. Welch deserves our sympathy for his daughter's death, but he is not entitled to impugn the motives of everyone who supports the death penalty. [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist. “An execution, not a lynching”. Jewish World Review. 15 May 2001]

Executing 'Children,' And Other Death-Penalty Myths 2 June 2002 - It's hard to say which is more offensive - the pretence that giving a lethal injection to a 25-year-old convicted murderer amounts to "executing children," or the spectacle of people who never shed a tear for the innocent John Luttig weeping so noisily for his killer.

Executing 'Children,' And Other Death-Penalty Myths 2 June 2002 - In any case, the age issue is a red herring.  No state allows the death sentence for anyone younger than 16, and no one younger than 23 has been executed in modern times.  Anti-execution activists seized on Beazley's age for the same reason they seized on Karla Faye Tucker's death row conversion to Christianity and Ricky McGinn's last-minute plea for DNA testing:  They'll seize on any excuse to keep a murderer alive, no matter how lame the excuse or how obvious the murderer's guilt.

DEATH PENALTY abolitionists don't usually mention it, but in promoting a moratorium on executions, they are urging us down a road we have taken before. [Capital Punishment Saves Lives 6 June 2002]

In sum, between 1965 and 1980, there was practically no death penalty in the United States, and for 10 of those 16 years - 1967-76 - there was literally no death penalty: a national moratorium.

What was the effect of making capital punishment unavailable for a decade and a half? Did a moratorium on executions save innocent lives - or cost them?

The data are brutal. Between 1965 and 1980, annual murders in the United States skyrocketed, rising from 9,960 to 23,040. The murder rate - homicides per 100,000 persons - doubled from 5.1 to 10.2. [Capital Punishment Saves Lives 6 June 2002]

Was it just a fluke that the steepest increase in murder in US history coincided with the years when the death penalty was not available to punish it? Perhaps. Or perhaps murder becomes more attractive when potential killers know that prison is the worst outcome they can face. By contrast, common sense suggests that there are at least some people who will not commit murder if they think it might cost them their lives. Sure enough, as executions have become more numerous, murder has declined. [Capital Punishment Saves Lives 6 June 2002]

Obviously, murder and the rate at which it occurs are affected by more than just the presence or absence of the death penalty. But even after taking that caveat into account, it seems irrefutably clear that when murderers are executed, innocent lives are saved. And when executions are stopped, innocent lives are lost. [Capital Punishment Saves Lives 6 June 2002]

But the due process in non-death penalty cases is not nearly as scrupulous. Everyone knows that there are innocent people behind bars today. If the legal system's flaws justify a moratorium on capital punishment, a fortiori they justify a moratorium on imprisonment. Those who call for a moratorium on executions should be calling just as vehemently for a moratorium on prison terms. Why don't they?

Because they know how ridiculous it would sound. If there are problems with the system, the system should be fixed, but refusing to punish criminals would succeed only in making society far less safe than it is today. [Capital Punishment Saves Lives 6 June 2002]

The same would be true of a moratorium on executions. If due process in capital murder cases can be made even more watertight, by all means let us do so. But not by keeping the worst of our murderers alive until perfection is achieved. We've been down the moratorium road before. We know how that experiment turns out. The results are written in wrenching detail on gravestones across the land. [Capital Punishment Saves Lives 6 June 2002]

That is a worthy goal, but it cannot be an absolute criterion. No worthwhile human endeavor is utterly foolproof. Dr. Bieber's hospital would have to shut down its operating rooms if surgeons had to guarantee their infallibility. Even at hospitals as renowned as the Brigham, patients sometimes die on the operating table because of blunders or inadvertence. Is that an argument for abolishing surgery? Should air travel be banned because innocent passengers may lose their lives in crashes? Should the pharmaceutical industry be shut down because the wrong drug or dosage, mistakenly taken or prescribed, can kill? [Execution saves innocents... by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe September 28, 2003]

To make the perfect the enemy of the good is irrational and counterproductive. The benefits of surgery, air travel, and prescription drugs are enormous -- far too valuable to give up even though we know that people will die because of the fallibility of doctors and pilots and people who handle medicine. The same is true of capital punishment: The benefits of a legal system in which judges and juries have the option of sentencing the cruelest or coldest murderers to death far outweigh the potential risk of executing an innocent person. And there is this added reassurance: The risk of an erroneous execution is infinitesimal, and getting smaller all the time.

And the benefits? First and foremost, the death penalty makes it possible for justice to be done to those who commit the worst of all crimes. The execution of a murderer sends a powerful moral message: that the innocent life he took was so precious, and the crime he committed so horrific, that he forfeits his own right to remain alive. [Execution saves innocents... by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe September 28, 2003]

When a vicious killer is sent to the electric chair or strapped onto a gurney for a lethal injection, society is condemning his crime with a seriousness and intensity that no other punishment achieves. By contrast, a society that sentences killers to nothing worse than prison -- no matter how depraved the killing or how innocent the victim -- is a society that doesn't really think murder is so terrible.

But there is more to executions than justice for the dead. There is also protection for the living. [Execution saves innocents... by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe September 28, 2003]

…the real threat to innocent life is not the availability of the death penalty, but the absence of one. For every time a murderer is executed, innocent lives are saved. [Execution saves innocents... by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe September 28, 2003]

The foes of capital punishment have denied for years that putting murderers to death has a deterrent effect on other potential killers. That has always flown in the face of common sense and history -- after all, wherever murder is made punishable by death, murder rates generally decline. But it also flies in the face of a lengthening shelf of research that confirms the death penalty's deterrent effect. [Execution saves innocents... by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe September 28, 2003]

Actually there have been close to 600,000 homicides in the United States since 1976, and the total climbs by roughly 15,000 each year. Where is the uproar over those round numbers? Where are the protests, the petitions, the Hollywood rallies aimed at stopping those deaths? I understand that some people think capital punishment is wrong as a matter of principle. What I cannot understand is how anyone can be more outraged by the lawful execution each year of a few dozen murderers than by the annual slaughter of thousands of victims at the hands of such murderers. (Misplaced sympathy for killers By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | December 7, 2005)

Opponents of capital punishment make much of the theoretical possibility that an innocent defendant might be killed. What they never acknowledge is that the abolition of capital punishment guarantees that innocent victims will die. That isn't only because executing murderers has a powerful deterrent effect, as a number of recent studies confirm. It is also because prison bars can't keep some killers from killing again. (Misplaced sympathy for killers By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | December 7, 2005)

Ultimately, the case for putting murderers like Williams and Boyd to death isn't just a practical one, strong though the practical arguments are. It is also a moral one. When the state executes a murderer, it is making a statement about the demands of justice and the sanctity of human life -- a statement as old as Genesis, and as essential as ever. (Misplaced sympathy for killers By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | December 7, 2005)

"If you're saying that the worst that could happen to someone who commits a murder is that he spends time in prison, to me, that's like saying, 'Really, we don't consider murder to be that terrible.”

“If the criminal taking of a human life does not merit forfeiture of one's own life, then what value have we placed on the life taken?”

The best arguments against the death penalty are two:

One, you might execute the wrong person. In the case of Palestinian terrorists acting and killing in the open, check this box: Argument not applicable.

Two, you engage in the very brutality that the murderer engages in. In the case of convicted murderers who will likely be released in these immoral prisoner exchanges, who express no regret, who — to the contrary — will do their best to kill innocent people again, check this box: Argument not applicable. [Death penalty for Palestinian terrorists Thursday, 20 October 2011 06:24 IJN Editorial Staff]

To make him a magnet for kidnapping, to make a mockery of his life sentence by letting him out, and to help him kill again, is totally different from the non-Palestinian-terrorist context; and totally transcends the argument that to execute him is to sink to his level of brutality. Exactly the opposite. To execute the Palestinian terrorist is to engage in the very purpose of the life sentence: the protection of the innocent. [Death penalty for Palestinian terrorists Thursday, 20 October 2011 06:24 IJN Editorial Staff]

O.J. was 'proved innocent' too (Jewish World Review June 30, 2000) - The breathless reports of prisoners being released from death row after DNA testing is just the latest salvo from a movement that wants to end the imposition of the death penalty under any circumstances, for any murderer, no matter how heinous and no matter how guilty.

The anti-capital punishment faction, badly outnumbered in modern life, basically believes nobody should be executed for anything. A request for clemency, under this worldview, resembles an entitlement. Not to extend clemency is somehow an affront - to the changed behavior of the condemned, to the process of abstract justices. To something. [Opinion: Clemency critics mask true objectives by William Murchison Lone Star Report VOLUME 3, ISSUE 16 -- January 8, 1999]