For years I have been unable to see anything in capital punishment but a torture [une supplice] the imagination could not endure and a lazy disorder that my reason condemned. Yet I was ready to think that my imagination was influencing my judgment. But, to tell the truth, I found during my recent research nothing that did not strengthen my conviction, nothing that modified my arguments…. The death penalty stains our society.

—Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine”