Professor Deborah Denno is quoted in Bloomberg Law discussing the Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ strong opposition to the death penalty.
Stevens was an evidence-based thinker who relied on statistics and sophisticated research to support his arguments while also couching the numbers with a passion and eloquence that underscored their significance, said Deborah Denno, law professor at Fordham University.
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After Baze he would expound further in speeches and talks in which he highlighted the numbers of exonerations of innocent inmates, the high cost of prosecuting capital cases, the lack of the death penalty’s benefit relative to the reduction of harm, and the extraordinary degree of waste on every level.“To Justice Stevens, whatever purpose the death penalty was supposed to serve was no longer relevant in light of a legal and empirical world that had exposed every crack in the penalty’s foundation,” Denno said.