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.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
No man should be judge in his own case.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
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!
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
