Quotes

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

No man should be judge in his own case.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

He who profits by a crime commits it.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

One crime is everything; two nothing.