Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before. The world is watching… With deep sadness, but commitment to the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment, I respectfully dissent.
For there to be healing, there has to be mercy. Killing Jeremiah [Manning] will not bring us any closure. It will not heal the wounds that were created. Rather, that action by the state will result in more harm and more pain and more suffering and not just for my family but for his family, which is something that people forget about.
Marcellus Williams should be alive today. There were multiple points in the timeline when decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty. If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.
If he [Richard Glossip] is executed, I believe that it will be a travesty of justice.
So, I saw all of those problems while I was on the court and I became convinced that the risk of executing an innocent person is just too high and that too many prosecutors and judges are overly focused on making the crimes or the convictions for the crimes final. They’re more interested in finality than they are in the accuracy of the conviction or the sentence.
The trend is beyond dispute… An increasing number of conservative Republican state lawmakers nationwide are taking the lead because they believe in limited government, they demand fiscal responsibility and most importantly, they value life.
I think morally, I feel obligated… Anyone who says they’re pro-life should feel a little conflicted on this topic — because if you’re pro-life then I think you’ve got to look at it and say you’re that way from the beginning to the very end. And I don’t think that the government should have a monopoly on violence.
I will be forever haunted by my participation in his [Robert Roberson’s] arrest and prosecution… He is an innocent man.
The capital punishment system in Oklahoma is broken. It does not work as it should. From start to finish, it is so badly broken that we cannot know whether someone who has been condemned to death is actually deserving of the ultimate penalty.
Regardless of our individual positions on the death penalty, I think we can all agree that putting a potentially innocent man to death for a crime that may not have occurred would be a grave miscarriage of justice.
[C]ourts must be careful to safeguard the rights that our Constitution protects, even when (and perhaps especially when) evaluating errors made in cases stemming from a terrible crime.
Times have changed, my own thinking has changed… if it were on my plate today, I would probably act differently.
