Marquis de Sade

"The second reason for abolishing the death penalty is that it has never prevented crime, for crimes are committed every day at the foot of the scaffold. This penalty should be eliminated, in a word, because there is no calculation more erroneous than that involved in putting one man to death for killing another, since the obvious result of the procedure is that instead of one man less, there are suddenly two, and such arithmetic can be familiar only to executioners and imbeciles."
Donatien Aldonse Francois, Marquis de Sade
December 14, 2000