During a ​“fire­side chat” with fel­low Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and hun­dreds of lawyers and judges who prac­tice in fed­er­al courts in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens stat­ed, ​“I think this coun­try would be much bet­ter off if we did not have cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Stevens not­ed that he believes the death penal­ty is con­sti­tu­tion­al, adding, ​“But I real­ly think it’s a very unfor­tu­nate part of our judi­cial sys­tem and I would feel much, much bet­ter if more states would real­ly con­sid­er whether they think the ben­e­fits out­weigh the very seri­ous poten­tial injus­tice, because in these cas­es the emo­tions are very, very high on both sides and to have stakes as high as you do in these cas­es, there is a spe­cial poten­tial for error. We can­not ignore the fact that in recent years a dis­turb­ing num­ber of inmates on death row have been exon­er­at­ed.” The ​“fire­side chat” was part of the 7th Circuit Bar Association din­ner in Chicago. Justice Stevens and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sandra Day O’Connor have all voiced con­cerns about the death penal­ty in recent years, but this is per­haps one the most pro­nounced state­ments against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment made by a Supreme Court jus­tice since the late Harry Blackmun, who wrote in 1994, ​“From this day for­ward, I no longer shall tin­ker with the machin­ery of death.” (Chicago Sun Times, May 12, 2004) See New Voices.

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