_merald_’s Reviews > Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience, and the End of Executions > Status Update

i keep forgetting to get quotes, i've been reading this guy on the go

pg201 Revenge combines retribution with the infliction of an extreme punishment. It requires that the murderer truly suffer for his evil act, which could extend to a painful and violent death (hanging or electrocution). The lethal injection confuses everything, because it seems to snuff a life out so gently that nothing much has happened.

pg174 "When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absentmindedly registers the condemnation of a man. But if people are shown the machine, made to touch the wood and steel and to hear the sound of a head falling, then public imagination suddenly awakened, which repudiate both the vocabulary and the penalty."

pg172 "It was as if the spring in his soul, by which everything was held together and acquired life, had been suddenly pulled out and all had collapsed into a heap of senseless refuse. Though he did not realise it, his faith in the right ordering of the universe, in humanity, in his soul and in God, had been destroyed."

pg168 "...killing is killing, whether socially sanctioned or not."
pg170 "By bein present with an air of hypocritical solemnity at the killing of a being like us, we are participating in some kind of lawless detestable farce."
pg171 "The attributes of the executioner are to be found in almost every contemporary man." - Dostoevsky

pg159 There are moments when no one seems to want to do it, which suggests that there is something wrong with "it".
pg160 "To take the life of an innocent person... is indeed the most tragic thing that we can do."
pg162 "I ponder what it says about me that I can, with cool precision,... seal another human being's fate but lack the courage to witness the consequences of my actions."

pg.147 "He is not a demon... though surely his act was demonic."
pg.147 "look into the eyes of a coward... he is no patriot. He is a traitor and he deserves to die... It's time for justice."
pg.149 "If he got life in prison, I felt that would be enough. The rest is savagery."

pg.137 "society should stand for something better than what we are in our worst moments."
pg.142 Hubris, man playing God, has the psychological effect of transgressing, of violating one's human limits and seizing a divine entitlement.
pg.146 "Their suffering is not a distraction to be minimised, but a reality that a jury must confront in assessing the gravity of the offense."