"Immanuel Kant said it best. He said a society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else's life is simply immoral. So the question really... when the system works and when you manage to identify somebody who has done such heinous evil, do we as a society have a right to take his life? I think the answer's plainly yes. And I would go with Kant and I would say it is immoral for us not to." (7 November 2007 Hoover Institution Interview)

"Most of us continue to believe that those who show utter contempt for human life by committing remorseless, premeditated murder justly forfeit the right to their own life." 

In his dissent to a 2009 opinion in which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the death sentence of an inmate named Scott Pinholster, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski offered a hint of the exasperation that exists with an appellate system that can string cases out for years.

The trial in that case had taken place more than a quarter century earlier, Kozinski noted. Pinholster's original lawyers were dead. The California Supreme Court justice who wrote the unanimous opinion in Pinholster's direct appeal was dead.

"Meanwhile, prison has been good to Pinholster," Kozinski wrote. "He sits in his cell reading Machiavelli, Voltaire and all the philosophers, drawing pictures to sell over the Internet. He enjoys the gravitas, authority and mentoring opportunities that come with being an elder in his gang, and has surgery performed on his knees at taxpayer expense. His conscience doesn't trouble him about the fact that he took the lives of two fellow human beings; he has never expressed the least remorse for his killings. The people of California are entitled to put an end to Pinholster's paid vacation."

Brutal facts have immense power; they etched deep marks in my psyche. Those who commit such atrocities, I concluded, forfeit their own right to live. We tarnish their memory of the dead and heed needless misery on their surviving families by letting the perpetrators live. [Tinkering with death 10 February 1997]

Isn’t death by firing squad, with mutilation and bloodshed, more honest? [Tinkering with death 10 February 1997]

It's late Saturday night. Another execution is scheduled for next week, and the machinery of death is humming through my fax. And, despite the qualms, despite the queasiness I still feel every time an execution is carried out in my jurisdiction, I tinker away. I do it because I have taken an oath. But there's more. I do it because I believe that society is entitled to take the life of those who have shown utter contempt for the lives of others. And because I hear the tortured voices of the victims crying out to me for vindication. [Tinkering with death 10 February 1997]

Some federal judges considering death penalty cases say their colleagues should take notice of the suffering of crime victims, not just the possibility that an inmate being executed may feel pain.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday 15 May 2012 refused to block an Arizona execution, rejecting a challenge that injection methods could cause unconstitutional pain and suffering for inmates.

Several 9th Circuit judges’ dissents in the case of Samuel Lopez cited the possibility of pain during injections, but three other judges said Friday in an amended order that such concerns are groundless and misdirected.

While there’s always going to a risk of some pain in an execution because it can be difficult to find veins, the “incomparable suffering the victim endured during the last desperate minutes of her life” must not be ignored, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for himself and two other judges.

Kozinski quoted from a state court ruling that said there was evidence of a “bloody struggle” throughout 59-year-old Estefana Holmes’ apartment. Holmes she was gagged, blindfolded, sexually assaulted and stabbed at least 26 times.

“The panel delicately omits these facts, as did our previous opinion, which merely referred to the crime as ‘brutal,’ but common decency surely calls on us to acknowledge that Lopez is not the victim here, and whatever pain he may suffer incident to his execution pales in comparison to the agony and terror he inflicted on a defenceless woman whose body he used to state his lust,” Kozinski wrote.

Will the economic slump and every state's need to cut budgets have an impact? Death penalty opponents say the recession has given their effort a new, non-political reason for abolition that resonates on both sides of the debate. But Professor Paul Cassell, the Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Utah and a death penalty expert, says that major changes are not likely to occur soon.

"You can make the argument that it is cheaper not to have the death penalty" he said, but that is not what the death penalty is about. The death penalty "provides a sense of justice to the system, is a just punishment for murder and has a deterrent effect on crime," he said. "Besides, the amount of money saved is not that big compared to what the entire justice system spends."

Like most death-penalty proponents, University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell would like the time between conviction and execution to be reduced. Otherwise, he said, the death penalty works well in this country and is structured to be lenient, not barbaric.

Another account of the death penalty’s direct inhibiting effect on criminal behavior is available from the State of Kansas. United States District Judge Paul Cassell quotes the following history, in a 1988 law-review article that he co-wrote while serving as a federal prosecutor:

“According to the Attorney General of Kansas, one of the contributing factors leading to the 1935 reenactment of the death penalty in Kansas for first-degree murder was the spate of deliberate killings committed in Kansas by criminals who had previously committed such crimes in surrounding states where their punishment, if captured, could have been the death penalty. These criminals admitted having chosen Kansas as the site of their crimes solely for the purpose of avoiding a death sentence in the event that they were captured.”

We're Not Executing the Innocent The Wall Street Journal Friday, June 16, 2000 - The report continues what has thus far been a glaringly one‑sided national discussion of the risk of error in capital cases.  Astonishingly, this debate has arisen when, contrary to urban legend, there is no credible example of any innocent person executed in this country under the modern death‑penalty system. On the other hand, innocent people undoubtedly have died because of our mistakes in failing to execute.

We're Not Executing the Innocent The Wall Street Journal Friday, June 16, 2000 - Colleen Reed, among many others, deserves to be remembered in any discussion of our error   rates. She was kidnapped, raped, tortured and finally murdered by Kenneth McDuff during the Christmas holidays in 1991. She would be alive today if McDuff had not narrowly escaped execution three times for two 1966 murders. His life was spared when the Supreme Court set aside death penalties in 1972, and he was paroled in 1989 because of prison overcrowding in Texas. After McDuff's release, Reed and at least eight other women died at his hands. Gov. George W. Bush approved McDuff's execution in 1998.

We're Not Executing the Innocent The Wall Street Journal Friday, June 16, 2000 - While no study has precisely quantified the risk from mistakenly failing to execute justly convicted murderers, it is undisputed that we extend extraordinarily generosity to murderers. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, the average sentence for murder and non-negligent manslaughter is less than six years. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has found that of 52,000 inmates serving time for homicide, more than 800 had previously been convicted of murder. THAT sounds like a system collapsing under the weight of its own mistakes -- and innocent people dying as a result.

Abolitionist arguments concerning the death penalty always seem a bit unsatisfying. Concepts of retribution, deterrence, and just punishment are discussed in the most thoughtful terms, but nowhere do we find a clear discussion of the crimes at issue. In some ways, these discussions are a bit like playing Hamlet without the ghost—reviewing the merits of capital punishment without revealing just what a capital crime is really like and how the victims have been brutalized. [In Defense of the Death Penalty]

Associate Professor of Law, University of Utah, College of Law, and former law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. Statement before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights Concerning Claims of Innocence in Capital Cases (July 23, 1993) - “Given the fallibility of human judgments, the possibility exists that the use of capital punishment may result in the execution of an innocent person. The Senate Judiciary Committee has previously found this risk to be 'minimal,' a view shared by numerous scholars. As Justice Powell has noted commenting on the numerous state capital cases that have come before the Supreme Court, the 'unprecedented safeguards' already inherent in capital sentencing statutes 'ensure a degree of care in the imposition of the sentence of death that can only be described as unique.'”

“Our present system of capital punishment limits the ultimate penalty to certain specifically-defined crimes and even then, permit the penalty of death only when the jury finds that the aggravating circumstances in the case outweigh all mitigating circumstances. The system further provides judicial review of capital cases. Finally, before capital sentences are carried out, the governor or other executive official will review the sentence to insure that it is a just one, a determination that undoubtedly considers the evidence of the condemned defendant's guilt. Once all of those decision makers have agreed that a death sentence is appropriate, innocent lives would be lost from failure to impose the sentence.”

“Capital sentences, when carried out, save innocent lives by permanently incapacitating murderers. Some persons who commit capital homicide will slay other innocent persons if given the opportunity to do so. The death penalty is the most effective means of preventing such killers from repeating their crimes. The next most serious penalty, life imprisonment without possibility of parole, prevents murderers from committing some crimes but does not prevent them from murdering in prison.”

“The mistaken release of guilty murderers should be of far greater concern than the speculative and heretofore nonexistent risk of the mistaken execution of an innocent person.”

The nature of the death penalty demands that we have confidence in its credibility with respect to guilt. We must evaluate whether there are aspects of our truth finding process that must be evaluated in order to avoid areas of significant vulnerability. Should this only be where death is the consequence? In that regard, I would only say that it must be where death is the consequence.

Punishment must be certain, and it must be swift to garner respect and value.

While a rush to judgment poses a significant danger to the credibility of the judicial process, so too does a casual stroll to judgment. The length of time that death penalty cases consume is simply not justifiable morally or legally. Different approaches must be evaluated and implemented. These include the use of courts of appeal to handle death penalty review, just as circuit courts of appeal are allowed to do in federal death penalty cases. The proposal of the Chief Justice of California should be supported and implemented.

Retribution is not only a need of society; it is a right of those victimized. [No on Prop. 34: Let the death penalty live 28 October 2012]

Every criminal conviction should be based on the highest degree of certainty, and we should certainly shore up weaknesses in the system. No one should be convicted, for example, by eyewitness and informant testimony that is not substantiated by independent evidence. But eliminating the death penalty does nothing to address these issues. [No on Prop. 34: Let the death penalty live 28 October 2012]

We have no way of knowing for certain, of course, how many people are not murdered because of the existence of the death penalty, and there have been studies that concluded the death penalty had no deterrent effect, but I don't find them convincing.

Why? In part because of what I saw over a long career. In cases of premeditated murder, considerable planning often goes into the act, and that planning can include the weighing of what is to be gained against the potential penalties. Any penalty can have some deterrent effect, but the more severe the penalty, the greater the disincentive to commit the crime. [No on Prop. 34: Let the death penalty live 28 October 2012]

If you knew that by executing one guilty person you could save even one or two innocent people from being murdered, the moral choice seems clear. Those who criticize aggressive sentencing laws often ignore the most important moral issue. If we can, through effective sentencing, reduce victimization, then it seems to me we are morally obligated to impose sentences that have that effect. [No on Prop. 34: Let the death penalty live 28 October 2012]

If the death penalty has prevented some people from being murder victims, then doing away with it would create additional murder victims. [No on Prop. 34: Let the death penalty live 28 October 2012]

I would far rather face the moral consequence of the death penalty than the consequence of innocent victims being killed. I choose innocent lives over guilty lives. [No on Prop. 34: Let the death penalty live 28 October 2012]

On Friday 18 March 2011, a federal judge dismissed an appeal Friday from Nebraska death-row inmate John Lotter, who was convicted in the triple murder that inspired the 1999 film "Boys Don't Cry."

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf ruled Lotter's case has been sufficiently scrutinized by the Nebraska courts and a federal review wasn't warranted.

"The Nebraska courts, and five (or more) zealous defense lawyers, have expended much sweat and treasure insuring that Lotter received a fair trial, a just sentence, a searching appeal and repeated postconviction examinations. . . . Legally speaking, if Nebraska carries out the sentence, there need be no 'second thoughts,'" the judge wrote in his 66-page decision.

"As long as there remains powerful evidence of strong public support for the death penalty ... we will not attempt to discern a contrary view of the public will, or to answer complex policy questions best answered by the legislative process," wrote Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers. [Monday 22 November 2011]

18 February 2011 – “There may not be closure today”, but Sheehan says, "I think there is peace."

According to the Texas Monthly, when Keller was asked in a pre-election interview if she was bound to follow the law, even if it meant an unjust result. “Absolutely,” she replied. “Who is going to determine what justice is? Me? I think justice is achieved by following the law.”

Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald Castille complained this year that federally funded public defenders are thwarting the state's legal process through repeated delays and appeals.

"When the families of murder victims and other concerned citizens ask why there is no effective death penalty in Pennsylvania, the dirty secret answer is: ask the federal court," Castille wrote in a sharply worded 34-page opinion this year (2011).

Friday 29 June 2012 - Defense attorneys for a man accused of killing a Trumann police officer sought to remove the death penalty from consideration because of a recent state Supreme Court ruling.

But Circuit Judge Brent Davis ruled that justices didn't negate the death penalty — only the procedure for carrying it out.

That means Jerry D. Lard, 37, of Trumann still faces a possible death sentence if convicted of the April 12, 2011, shooting death of officer Jonathan Schmidt. He's also charged with attempted capital murder in wounding Sgt. Corey Overstreet.

Lard will stand trial on July 16. The case was moved to Greene County on a change of venue from Poinsett County.

The state Supreme Court ruled June 22 that a 2009 act by the Legislature giving the director of the Department of Correction the ability to decide the chemical formula for lethal injection was unconstitutional.

Teri Chambers, one of Lard's court-appointed defense attorneys, argued that the Supreme Court's decision invalidated the death penalty.

"What's the point of having a death penalty trial when you have no method of execution?" Chambers asked.

Greene County Deputy Prosecutor Andrew Fulkerson argued that death by lethal injection was authorized by a 1983 statute, which has previously been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Davis agreed with Fulkerson's interpretation of last week's ruling.

"It doesn't prevent the state from proceeding with a death penalty case," the judge said. "It does not prevent the court from imposing the punishment."

A U.S. District Court judge ruled Wednesday 21December 2011 that even if the Arizona Department of Corrections varied from its court-approved protocol for execution by lethal injection, there was no violation of prisoners' constitutional rights.

And even if the drugs used in two of the last five executions in Florence were obtained unlawfully, the Corrections Department did not do so intentionally and knowingly, the judge wrote in his decision.

Judge Neil Wake ruled in favor of the state, denying an injunction requiring the DOC to conform to its established protocol.

"Although criminal background and professional license checks were omitted through inadvertence, the other deviations were authorized by Director Ryan and were neither unreasonable nor undertaken in bad faith," Wake wrote. "None of the deviations identified by plaintiffs create substantial risk plaintiffs will not be properly anesthetized." 

A serial killer who kept the decomposing bodies of 11 women in his Ohio home and yard for more than two years was sentenced to the death penalty on Friday 12 August 2011.

Judge Dick Ambrose accepted the jury's recommendation and ruled that Anthony Sowell's troubled childhood and mental health issues did not mitigate the seriousness of his crimes.

"The court gives no weight to the defendant's expression of remorse," Ambrose said in handing down the verdict.

"Things have changed," Frost wrote in a 24-page ruling. "Defendants have tightened procedures and have implemented checklists and safeguards ... that, effectively employed, will serve to reinforce the protocol requirements." [Friday 4 November 2011 - A federal judge on Friday upheld changes Ohio made to its execution policies, saying the state had tightened procedures that the judge previously criticized, such as not having enough executioners on a given day.]

"With some caution, the court today reaches the conclusion that the state of Ohio has apparently learned the lessons of its prior embarrassments and corrected its course," Frost wrote in a 24-page opinion.

Ohio said, in effect, that it was now following its own rules and the U.S. Constitution, Frost said.

"It does not matter to this court whether Ohio has acted motivated by admirable intent or whether it has been begrudgingly dragged toward respectability," Frost wrote, adding that the court remained wary because of the state's past struggles with consistent application of the rules.

US District Judge William Moore held a hearing on the issue on June 24 2010. On Tuesday, the judge issued a 174-page order concluding that Davis is guilty.

“This court concludes that executing an innocent person would violate the Eighth Amendment,” the judge wrote. “However, Mr. Davis is not innocent.”

While reviewing Davis' claims of innocence last year, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia found that Davis "vastly overstates the value of his evidence of innocence."

"Some of the evidence is not credible and would be disregarded by a reasonable juror," Judge William T. Moore wrote in a 172-page opinion. "Other evidence that Mr. Davis brought forward is too general to provide anything more than smoke and mirrors."

Wednesday 30 May 2012 - Lauderdale Circuit Court Judge Mike Jones said he never considers the potential cost of incarceration and future legal expenses when deciding if a defendant convicted of capital murder should be sentenced to death. He said that decision is based on the jury's recommendation and the circumstances of the homicide.

When a defendant is convicted of capital murder in Alabama, the jury then hears additional evidence before recommending the death penalty or life in prison without parole as punishment. The judge is not obligated to follow the recommendation when imposing the punishment.

"We don't need to put someone to death because it's cheaper than keeping them in prison for the rest of their life," she said. "At the same time, we shouldn't not put someone to death because it might be more expensive than keeping them in prison. You don't make a life or death decision based on economics."

Jones has imposed the death penalty twice.

He sentenced David Dewayne Riley Jr. to death in 2007 for the 2005 shooting death of Florence package store clerk Scott Michael Kirtley. He sentenced Riley, 27, to death again in 2011 after the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his first conviction on a technicality. The jury at both trials recommended that Riley receive the death sentence for the execution-style shooting.

Jones said the possible cost of sending Riley to death row never crossed his mind before carrying out the recommendation of the juries.

"The Alabama Legislature may someday decide we can no longer afford to send people to death row," Jones said. "That's a decision they would have to make and until they do, I am going to continue to carry out the recommendations of juries who say someone deserves the death penalty when the circumstances of a murder warrant sending a defendant to death row."

If a criminal court judge sits on the bench long enough, he's bound to handle a capital murder case-a case in which life or death is in the hands of the judge or jury.

"I've always felt the death penalty was something I wish we didn't have but it is necessary in some cases," said Criminal District Court Judge John Stevens. "Because some people are the kind of persons who would hurt an innocent human being given an opportunity in the future." [Tuesday 4 October 2011]

That's a decision a jury made in the case against Lawrence Russell Brewer. He was executed September 21 in Huntsville for the dragging death of James Byrd Junior.

John Stevens was the federal prosecutor in the case. Now, he's the Criminal District Court Judge.

Judge Stevens believes the death penalty is justified in some crimes.

"When they commit a crime we all have to be careful about doing something where they have an opportunity to hurt someone in the future, because if they do that, blood is on our hands," said Judge Stevens.