Who Is To Say That 5 Men

From This Day Forward, I No Longer Shall Tinker With The Machinery Of Death. For More Than 20 Years I Have Endeavored - Indeed, I Have Struggled - Along With A Majority Of This Court, To Develop Procedural And Substantive Rules That Would Lend More Than The Mere Appearance Of Fairness To The Death Penalty Endeavor. Rather Than Continue To Coddle The Court's Delusion That The Desired Level Of Fairness Has Been Achieved And The Need For Regulation Eviscerated, I Feel Morally And Intellectually Obligated To Concede That The Death Penalty Experiment Has Failed.

If There Is Any Truth To The Old Proverb That "one Who Is His Own Lawyer Has A Fool For A Client," The Court Now Bestows A Constitutional Right On One To Make A Fool Of Himself.

The Mixing Of Government And Religion Can Be A Threat To Free Government, Even If No One Is Forced To Participate.... When The Government Puts Its Imprimatur On A Particular Religion, It Conveys A Message Of Exclusion To All Those Who Do Not Adhere To The Favored Beliefs. A Government Cannot Be Premised On The Belief That All Persons Are Created Equal When It Asserts That God Prefers Some.

From This Day Forward, I No Longer Shall Tinker With The Machinery Of Death. ... I Fell Morally And Intellectually Obligated Simply To Concede That The Death Penalty Experiment Has Failed.

Of One Thing, However, I Am Certain. Just As An Execution Without Adequate Safeguards Is Unacceptable, So Too Is An Execution When The Condemned Prisoner Can Prove That He Is Innocent. The Execution Of A Person Who Can Show That He Is Innocent Comes Perilously Close To Simple Murder.