“Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders”

— Albert Camus, book Reflections on the Guillotine

Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)
Context: Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.

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Albert Camus209

French author and journalist 1913–1960

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“But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder. Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act. And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act,—at least in theory.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

Individual Liberty (1926), Anarchism and Capital Punishment

“We have carried out the attempted premeditated murder of an entire nation. We were caught in that criminal act and have been obstructed. Now we have to suffer the punishment…. In the Balkan Wars, Serbia not only doubled its territory, but also its external enemies.”

Dimitrije Tucović (1881–1914) Serbian politician

T. Gallagher, The Balkans in the New Millennium: In the Shadow of War and Peace, Routledge, 2006. ISBN 0415349400

“What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?”

Albert Camus book Reflections on the Guillotine

Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)

“The burning of the house of the offender is not a permissible punishment for arson. The rape of the offender is not a permissible punishment of a rapist. Why should murder be a permissible punishment for murder?”

Ismail Mahomed (1931–2000) South African judge

Justice Ismail Mahomed, S v Makwanyane (6 June 1995).

“The soldier's lot is the most melancholy relic of barbarism (next to capital punishment) that lingers on among mankind.”

Alfred De Vigny book Servitude et grandeur militaires

L'existence du Soldat est (après la peine de mort) la trace la plus douloureuse de barbarie qui subsiste parmi les hommes.
Servitude et grandeur militaires; (ed.) Paul Viallaneix Oeuvres complètes, (1965) p. 358; translation from Humphrey Hare (trans.) The Military Necessity (1953) p. 17. (1835).

“I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

Individual Liberty (1926), Anarchism and Capital Punishment

“Yet the ultimate problem is more fundamental. I have long believed that the death penalty is in all circumstances a barbaric and inhuman punishment that violates our Constitution. Even the most vile murderer does not release the state from its constitutional obligation to respect human dignity, for the state does not honor the victim by emulating the murderer who took his life. The fatal infirmity of capital punishment is that it treats members of the human race as non-humans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded.”

William J. Brennan (1906–1997) American judge

Writing in Reason and Passion: Justice Brennan's Enduring Influence (1997).

“Capital punishment [could] serve as a deterrent. I do not think we have enough deterrents in this country for criminals – let’s not forget that murders, rapists and criminals of that nature choose to commit the crimes that they commit.”

Priti Patel (1972) British politician

Said during a Question Time debate. Quoted by the Independent. Priti Patel MP: Who is the new Treasury minister who supports death penalty and rejects plain packaging for cigarettes? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/priti-patel-mp-who-is-the-new-treasury-minister-who-supports-death-penalty-and-rejects-plain-9608096.html (15 July 2014) <br class="br">2014

“A man who uses power to do evil is in theory judged to have been conscious of his acts and to be as fit for punishment as a perpetrator of premeditated murder. But the technocrat is not trained on that level. He understands events within the logic of the system. The greatest good is the greatest logic or the greatest appearance of efficiency or responsibility for the greatest possible part of the structure.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

Presidential Agent II (1944), ISBN 1-93131-318-0
Variant: Fascism is capitalism plus murder.

“Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders”

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