I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)
Context: How come life in prison doesn't mean life? Until it does, we're not ready to do away with the death penalty. Stop thinking in terms of "punishment" for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers. Americans have a right to go about their lives without worrying about these people being back out on the street. So until we can make sure they're off the street permanently, we have to grit our teeth and put up with the death penalty. So we need to work toward making a life sentence meaningful again. If life meant life, I could, if you'll excuse the pun, live without the death penalty.
We don't have it here in Minnesota, thank God, and I won't advocate to get it. But I will advocate to make life in prison mean life. I don't think I would want the responsibility for enforcing the death penalties. There's always the inevitable question of whether someone you gave the order to execute might truly have been innocent.
“But no, I just don't think with the scientific evidence now -- I think I read an article yesterday on the death penalty, and 68 percent of the time they make mistakes. And it’s so racist, too. I think more than half the people getting the death penalty are poor blacks. This is the one place, the one remnant of racism in our country is in the court system, enforcing the drug laws and enforcing the death penalty. I don’t even know, but I wonder how many of those, how many have been executed? Over 200, I wonder how many were minorities? You know, if you're rich, you usually don't meet the death penalty.”
Interview with the Concord Monitor Editorial Board, (August 18, 2011)
2011
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Ron Paul 148
American politician and physician 1935Related quotes
Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 10 (p. 187)
Context: Given how many convicts awaiting capital punishment have been cleared because of DNA evidence, I no longer support the death penalty. Minnesota doesn't have this on the books, so I'm thankful that, as governor, I never had to face the decision of whether to execute someone on death row. Again, I simply don't believe that government has the inherent right to make those kinds of choices.
TV Interview for Channel 4 A plus 4 (15 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105764
Second term as Prime Minister
press After a cabinet meeting in Tehran http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/iranian-president-mohammad-khatami-speaks-to-the-press-news-photo/2816904 (18 December 2003)
Attributed
Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 27 (in 2006 edition)
“I believe that more people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.”
US embassy cables culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee
Haroon
Siddique
Matthew
Weaver
The Guardian
2010-12-01
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/us-embassy-cables-executed-mike-huckabee
2010-12-02
regarding leak of 250,000 US diplomatic cables to the website WikiLeaks
Writing in Reason and Passion: Justice Brennan's Enduring Influence (1997).
2010-, Ai Weiwei: 'Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again...', 2011