John Paul Stevens Quotes
When I signed on to letting the death penalty back in, I thought the procedural protections against executing an innocent person were stronger than they turned out to be.
Stevens, John Paul. The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years. Little, Brown and Company, 2019.
Texas executes more people than the rest of the United States does. However, just before the debate an investigation disclosed 56 recent cases in Texas where the “criminals” were completely exonerated based on the work of some volunteer attorneys and law students. They were all released from jail where many had served decades for crimes they did not commit. 5 were released from Death Row—awaiting to be executed. See {635339}.
More and more evidence had been mounting that innocent men had been mistakenly sentenced to death throughout the country and Texas executed more people than any other state.
The exonerated based on the investigative work of some volunteer attorneys and law students. None of the miscarriages of justice were found or discovered by any law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, judges or officials of Texas. All the exonerated were released from jail where many had served decades for crimes they did not commit. 5 were released from Death Row—awaiting to be executed. Perry’s logic was that there was no problem because the 56 were released. For him, innocent people serving decades in Jail and sometimes waiting to be executed, did not constitute a problem. Of course, he assumed that the 56 cases of exhortation were the only cases of wrongful convictions in Texas. See {635340}.
Kozinski was a supporter of captial punishment, but beileved it important that society was very slear about what it was doing. Executing a man is a very brutal process, and shen society determines that it is necessary, it shoud face the fact and the reality of the decision it is making. Hence he favored public executions
John Paul Stevens was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1975 until his voluntary retirement in 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the second-oldest-serving justice in the history of the court and the third-longest-serving justice. At the time of his death, he was the longest lived Supreme Court justice ever. His long tenure saw him write for the court on most issues of American law, including civil liberties, death penalty, government action and intellectual property. In cases involving presidents of the United States, he wrote for the court that they were to be held accountable under American law. A registered Republican when appointed who throughout his life identified as a conservative, Stevens was considered to have been on the liberal side of the court at the time of his retirement.
