[T]here is a real worry by jurors of 'I believe in it, but what if we later find out it was someone else and it's too late to do anything about it?'

In this country, you are better off being rich and guilty than poor and innocent.

The death penalty absolutely costs more money, in fact the DA's office and
the Public Defender's Office, everyone agrees it's much more costly than
incarceration.

. . . we're looking at capital punishment as a way to mitigate against the fact that we have taken away many of our moral standards away from our young people . . .

I have inquired for most of my adult life about studies that might show that the death penalty is a deterrent. And I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point.

It is an expensive government program with the power to kill people.

I think I could prove to you that I could put someone in the Waldorf Hotel for 60 to 70 years and feed them three meals a day cheaper than we can litigate a single death penalty case.

The moral and monetary investment of the death penalty is significantly greater than the return to society.

[The death penalty] consumes huge sums of money that could be used for direct victims' services, such as counseling, funeral expenses, and educational help for the children left behind.

Abolishing the death penalty and using life without parole instead can't fix all the injustices exposed in courts across the nation. But at least no one would be executed as a result.

When it comes to human life, a system that gets it right most of the time should not exist at all.

It's not about crime prevention or crime deterrence or saving money. [With executions] we're creating a lot of other residual victims.

Thank you for your hard work and leadership. We are a better State and Country because of you and Equal Justice USA.

Everybody [who took part in executions] suffered. I still get flashbacks.

What I've learned from looking at the Florida system and the other systems around the country is that the death penalty is a quagmire.

If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed.

Much has changed since I voted to reinstate the death penalty twenty years ago. New technologies such as DNA and other evidence have shown that people can make terrible mistakes.

Given the irreversibility of the death penalty, the possibility of a wrongful conviction can never be overstated

...being selected as a defendant for a capital case is as random and serendipitous as being struck by lightning.

We can never build a system that is able to prevent the execution of those who are actually innocent. To me, this is a compelling argument why we should abolish the Death Penalty.

The capital punishment system may have been put in place to serve us survivors, but it actually has been a colossal failure.

If my brother's wife is sentenced to death for her actions, we will have to face years, perhaps decades, of mandatory appeals.

EJUSA has been invaluable to the campaign for repeal in Tennessee. Because of the work of EJUSA, Tennessee’s work has become smarter, more strategic, and poised for success.

I believe that inside many Americans lies certain uneasiness about capital punishment.

It is a human system, and because it is fallible and because it is human, it makes mistakes. Executions make those mistakes irreversible.

The Constitution guarantees the right to an attorney. It doesn't say the lawyer has to be awake.

...it's impossible to streamline death-penalty litigation to justify the cost, because doing so would dramatically increase the risk of wrongful executions.

More and more, the climate is against trying capital cases...

It is time for conservatives to do what they do best and insist that a wasteful, inefficient government program gets off the books. Small government and the death penalty don’t go together.

I have come to think of it [the death penalty] as a ridiculous institution...You can't design a system where you can ensure that an innocent person is not executed.

It's the roll of the dice. If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone.

We really can find no way to do this that will take the arbitrariness out of the system.

At least five men who were sentenced to death in Georgia had lawyers who referred to them in court as 'niggers.'

I spent 17 years, eight months and one day on death row. I was not saved by the system. I was saved in spite of the system.

When the New York courts struck our death penalty, it was EJUSA that gave us the vision and resources to defeat the death penalty entirely.

[The death penalty means victims’ families are] putting their lives on hold for years, sometimes decades, as they attend new hearings and appeals and relive the murder.

No set of procedures can completely guard against human error. Believe me, I was certain Ronald Cotton was the man who raped me — certain.

Spending our tax dollars on actually preventing crimes, instead of pursuing death sentences after they've already been committed, will assure us we will have fewer victims.

...the death penalty is not an effective law enforcement tool in practice. It is a distraction from justice.

At some point in this death-penalty debate, the sanctity of innocent life demands that men and women of conservative conscience have to say: Enough.

...it is just absurd that we would pull officers from the streets and at the same time spend millions of dollars to have a death penalty system that has not been proven to prevent crime.

I think that any reasonable person would have to reach that conclusion that someone has been executed for a crime they didn't commit.

While we must always work to improve our justice system and appeals process, it will never be perfect. Never. But executing a person will always be final.

[A capital case amounts to] playing on a $100-a-roll table instead of a nickel or dime table.

Despite the best intentions of law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and jurors, innocent people have been convicted and sentenced to death.

[The death penalty is] a waste of time and money...The only thing it does is prolong the agony of the victims' families.

[T]here’s no chance California’s death penalty can ever be fixed. The millions wasted on this broken system would be much better spent keeping teachers, police and firefighters on their jobs.

When you're talking about death, you can't afford to make even one mistake.

Before working on Texas Death Row, I strongly supported capital punishment,

Unfortunately, no state treasury has a bottomless pit of law enforcement dollars. In making choices about the most effective way to spend them, the death penalty would be last on my list.

The death penalty simply puts families in a state of suspended animation, almost never delivering on the promise of healing while always holding out the false promise of "closure".

Two juries were wrong. Two judges were wrong. The state of Maryland was wrong... I am not here because the system worked. I am here because a series of miracles happened.

EJUSA became my family on my journey from grieving mother to effective advocate.

We need to acknowledge that the death penalty is broken beyond repair.

I fervently believe that capital punishment should be abolished. It's costing the state a huge amount of money.

I think capital punishment’s day is done in this country. I don’t think it’s fairly applied.

Instead of investing millions in a death penalty case that strings along victims’ for years we should invest that money in services that will help all victims.

I have seen the ugliness of murder up close and personal. But I have never heard a murderer say they thought about the death penalty as consequence of their actions prior to committing their crimes.

You have to pass a test to be a patent lawyer. You have to pass none to try a death penalty case in so many states.

I agree with Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that he would support the death penalty only when the infallibility of human judgment had been demonstrated.

I think the time has come to decide whether it's worth the cost.

The death penalty won't bring my brother back or help to apprehend his murderer. We need to start investing in programs that will actually improve public safety and get more killers off the streets.

When a criminal defendant is forced to pay with his life for his lawyer’s errors, the effectiveness of the criminal justice system as a whole is compromised.

Even in the best of circumstances, our system allows for error...As a matter of public respect for our justice system, we cannot tolerate error in execution.

Lest there be any doubt, the idea that the death penalty is fairly and rationally imposed in this country is a farce.

Conservatives, especially, should draw this lesson... Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.

We are so grateful for the assistance of Mona and Laura from EJUSA. We would be floundering if not for their patience, assistance, cheerleading, and expertise.

Eliminating the death penalty...will not hinder the prosecutorial capacity to seek, or the court’s ability to impose, ‘life without parole’ sentences for serious, heinous crimes and criminals.

I myself was haunted by the men I was asked to execute in the name of the State of Florida. I would wake up in the middle of the night to find them lurking at the foot of my bed.

If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed.

I came to the conclusion the only vote I could live with was a 'no' vote on the death penalty in Kansas.

Despite the tremendous resources required by capital prosecutions, mistakes are all to common; it is a fundamentally flawed process which dis-serves all involved.

The death penalty has failed victims’ family members in virtually every way, and many of us – including many who support the death penalty in principle – have come to support its end.

Conservatives, especially, should draw this lesson...capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.

I was a supporter and believer in the death penalty, but I've begun to see that this system doesn't work and it isn't functional. It costs an obscene amount of money.

At one time I believed that the death penalty would benefit people like my mother and me, but in reality nothing could be further from the truth.

From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.

The millions of taxpayer dollars we are currently wasting on a dysfunctional death penalty could be used for actual public safety measures.

My Tía's killer was her own son -- my cousin. He was in the midst of a psychotic break....Cutting funding to treat mental illness while paying for the death penalty is simply insane.

As error-prone humans, we can't guarantee a fail-safe criminal justice system; therefore, to be truly just we must abolish capital punishment.

It's becoming harder to justify the death penalty in the face of evidence that our system is flawed...

As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, ‘Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?' We knew the answer: No.

I’m here to tell you, as the Mother of a homicide victim, that the death penalty brings as much pain as it does relief, that it creates an entirely new layer of pain.

There's just no way I could conclude that the way we do this makes any sense. I have come to the conclude that, in fact, we apply the death penalty in a very arbitrary manner.

We should rethink the death penalty in this country. If even one innocent person is wrongly put to death on behalf of the state, for me, that is enough to get rid of it.

We've had the death penalty since 1994, and we continue to pay for the process with little results... But we continue to cut the programs that could prevent these types of crimes.

I think [the death penalty is] very expensive, and the delays are inordinate, delaying closure for the victims' families.

The death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.

One capital case absorbs the resources of another 200 cases. I don't think I'm exaggerating. The truth is, I can spend an 18-month period working out 50 major cases or one capital case.

Honor my son and other victims of murder by acting with the highest regard for human life. You must act with the minds and spirits at levels higher that the murderer who killed my son.

As a member of the New York Senate from 1966 to 1989, I voted 12 times to establish the death penalty in New York... I regret my votes in favor of the death penalty.

For justice to have any meaning, it must also mean that no innocent person should ever be executed...

There is not a single person on death row that had a fully funded private defense. If you're rich, you're not going to get capital punishment - period.