political leaders

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

Many states and even many people who are in support of the death penalty question their support of the death penalty because of the imperfection of our courts. Through DNA testing, we don't always get it right, even with that.

After years spent in Washington, I have become more aware than ever of the government’s ineptness and the likelihood of its making mistakes. I no longer trust the U.S. government to invoke and carry out a death sentence under any conditions.

Overall, we just need to evaluate the whole death penalty issue. If it's going to take millions and millions of dollars per inmate and years before we can execute someone, that's a major policy issue we need to look at.

As a conservative, I celebrated the vote [to repeal the death penalty] as a reflection of our values to be efficient and judicious with taxpayer dollars and to rid our government of programs that don’t work.

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

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.

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.

There are many people who commit heinous crimes, and I'd be the first to stand up with emotion and say they should lose their lives...But when I look at the unfairness of it, the fact that the poor and people of color are most often the victims when it comes to the death penalty, and how many cases we've gotten wrong now that we have DNA evidence to back us up, I mean, it just tells me life imprisonment is penalty enough.