Amendments Quote by John Paul Stevens

Requiring that an execution be relatively painless...actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.

— John Paul Stevens

I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: 1) Irreparability in the event of an error of…

— Albert Einstein

Of one thing, however, I am certain. Just as an execution without adequate safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned…

— Harry A. Blackmun

I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes…

— Albert Pierrepoint

There is a growing recognition that the death penalty simply can't work. It's a complex system that arbitrarily selects defendants for death and creates…

— Robert Cecil Martin

Embracing a certain quotient of racial bias and discrimination against the poor is an inexorable aspect of supporting capital punishment. This is an immoral…

— Bryan Stevenson

[Asserting] important First Amendment rights ... why should [executions] be the one area that is conducted behind closed doors?... Why shouldn't executions be public?

— Phil Donahue

Prison officials have been more concerned about sparing the sensitivities of executioners and witnesses than protecting the condemned prisoner from pain. They are more…

— Jamie Fellner

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

— Anonymous

Execution as punishment is barbaric and unnecessary.

— Kate Mulgrew

“But the punishment-body relation is not the same as it was in the torture during public executions. The body now serves as an instrument…

— Michel Foucault

Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one…

— Auberon Waugh